Cadaveric renal transplantation under cyclosporine-steroid therapy

Ninety-seven cadaveric renal transplants were performed upon 96 patients during 1981. The one year patient mortality was 2.1 per cent. Seventy of the recipients were undergoing trasplantation for the first time. Of these patients, 38 were treated with cyclosporine and steroids with a one year graft survival rate of 89.5 per cent. The other 32 primary recipients were treated with azathioprine and steroids with a one year graft survival rate of 50 per cent. The difference between the cyclosporine-steroid versus conventional therapy groups was significant. Cyclosporine and steroids were also used to treat 26 patients who underwent retransplantation with 27 cadaveric grafts. The one year graft survival time was 77.8 per cent; most of the graft losses were in presensitized patients. The results with retransplantation were twice as good as in historical control groups

Variable convalescence and therapy after cadaveric renal transplantation under cyclosporin A and steroids

The postoperative convalescence period was analyzed for 42 consecutive patients who had cadaveric renal transplantation under therapy with cyclosporin A and steroids. Twenty-two of the patients underwent transplantation for the first time, and the other 20 had retransplantation. None of the recipients has died. With follow-up period of two to eight months, the survival rate of grafts is 96 per cent after first transplantation and 85 per cent after retransplantation. Immunosuppression with a standard regimen was used for all patients at the outset. Early convalescence was highly variable, often necessitating adjustments of cyclosporin A and steroid dosage to accommodate the possibilities of rejection or cyclosporin A nephrotoxicity, or both, simultaneously. Management problems were more frequent and complex in patients undergoing retransplantation. From the results, a classification of convalescence patterns was evolved, with recommendations about how standardized initial therapy should be adjusted if the renal graft does not function promptly or deteriorates later

Techniques for combined procurement of hearts and kidneys with satisfactory early function of renal allografts.

Methods for combination of donor nephrectomy with donor cardiectomy are outlined. The satisfactory early function of 29 of 34 transplanted kidneys harvested with these techniques supports their wider application and should encourage their wider acceptance

Combination donor hepatectomy and nephrectomy and early functional results of allografts

In an approach to combined donor hepatectomy and nephrectomy, which is adaptable to any cadaveric kidney procurement method now in use, the importance of precooling with portal venous infusion is stressed. The over-all effectiveness of the technique in providing equal protection for the quality of all three organs is supported by the data presented. Encouragement should be given to the type of interinstitutional collaborations that are necessary for the continued progression of extrarenal organ transplantation

Reversibility of lymphomas and lymphoproliferative lesions developing under cyclosporin-steroid therapy

Post-transplant lymphomas or other lymphoproliferative lesions, which were usually associated with Epstein-Barr virus infections, developed in 8, 4, 3, and 2 recipients, respectively, of cadaveric kidney, liver, heart, and heart-lung homografts. Reduction or discontinuance of immunosuppression caused regression of the lesions, often without subsequent rejection of the grafts. Chemotherapy and irradiation were not valuable. The findings may influence policies about treating other kinds of post-transplantation neoplasms

The inflammation, vascular repair and injury responses to exercise in fit males with and without Type 1 diabetes: an observational study.

Type 1 diabetes is associated with raised inflammation, impaired endothelial progenitor cell mobilisation and increased markers of vascular injury. Both acute and chronic exercise is known to influence these markers in non-diabetic controls, but limited data exists in Type 1 diabetes. We assessed inflammation, vascular repair and injury at rest and after exercise in physically-fit males with and without Type 1 diabetes.Ten well-controlled type 1 diabetes (27 ± 2 years; BMI 24 ± 0.7 kg.m(2); HbA1c 53.3 ± 2.4 mmol/mol) and nine non-diabetic control males (27 ± 1 years; BMI 23 ± 0.8 kg.m(2)) matched for age, BMI and fitness completed 45-min of running. Venous blood samples were collected 60-min before and 60-min after exercise, and again on the following morning. Blood samples were processed for TNF-α using ELISA, and circulating endothelial progenitor cells (cEPCs; CD45(dim)CD34(+)VEGFR2(+)) and endothelial cells (cECs; CD45(dim)CD133(-)CD34(+)CD144(+)) counts using flow-cytometry.TNF-α concentrations were 4-fold higher at all-time points in Type 1 diabetes, when compared with control (P 0.05). Within the Type 1 diabetes group, the delta change in cEPCS from rest to the following morning was related to HbA1c (r = -0.65, P = 0.021) and TNF-α (r = -0.766, P = 0.005).Resting cEPCs and cECs in Type 1 diabetes patients with excellent HbA1c and high physical-fitness are comparable to healthy controls, despite eliciting 4-fold greater TNF-α. Furthermore, Type 1 diabetes patients appear to have a blunted post-exercise cEPCs response (vascular repair), whilst a biomarker of vascular injury (cECs) remained comparable to healthy controls

Schottky Diodes on ZnO Thin Films Grown by Plasma-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition

Enhancement of the properties of zinc oxide (ZnO)-based Schottky diodes has been explored using a combination of plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) ZnO thin films and silver oxide Schottky contacts deposited by reactive radio-frequency sputtering. The electrical properties of the ZnO thin films were systematically tuned by varying the deposition temperature and oxygen plasma time during PE-ALD to optimize the performance of the diode. Low temperature (80 °C) coupled with relatively long oxygen plasma time (>30 s) PE-ALD is the key to produce ZnO films with net doping concentration lower than 10 17 cm -3 . Under the optimal deposition conditions identified, the diode shows an ideality factor of 1.33, an effective barrier height of 0.80 eV, and an ON/OFF ratio of 3.11 × 10 5

Alcohol-induced retrograde facilitation renders witnesses of crime less suggestible to misinformation

RATIONALE: Research has shown that alcohol can have both detrimental and facilitating effects on memory: intoxication can lead to poor memory for information encoded after alcohol consumption (anterograde amnesia) and may improve memory for information encoded before consumption (retrograde facilitation). This study examined whether alcohol consumed after witnessing a crime can render individuals less vulnerable to misleading post-event information (misinformation). METHOD: Participants watched a simulated crime video. Thereafter, one third of participants expected and received alcohol (alcohol group), one third did not expect but received alcohol (reverse placebo), and one third did not expect nor receive alcohol (control). After alcohol consumption, participants were exposed to misinformation embedded in a written narrative about the crime. The following day, participants completed a cued-recall questionnaire about the event. RESULTS: Control participants were more likely to report misinformation compared to the alcohol and reverse placebo group. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that we may oversimplify the effect alcohol has on suggestibility and that sometimes alcohol can have beneficial effects on eyewitness memory by protecting against misleading post-event information