Extracellular free water and glutathione in first-episode psychosis-a multimodal investigation of an inflammatory model for psychosis.

Evidence has been accumulating for an immune-based component to the etiology of psychotic disorders. Advancements in diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have enabled estimation of extracellular free water (FW), a putative biomarker of neuroinflammation. Furthermore, inflammatory processes may be associated with altered brain levels of metabolites, such as glutathione (GSH). Consequently, we sought to test the hypotheses that FW is increased and associated with decreased GSH in patients with first-episode schizophrenia (SZ) compared with healthy controls (HC). SZ (n = 36) and HC (n = 40) subjects underwent a multi-shell diffusion MRI scan on a Siemens 3T scanner. 1H-MR spectroscopy data were acquired using a GSH-optimized MEGA-PRESS editing sequence and GSH/creatine ratios were calculated for DLPFC (SZ: n = 33, HC: n = 37) and visual cortex (SZ: n = 29, HC: n = 35) voxels. Symptoms and functioning were measured using the SANS, SAPS, BPRS, and GSF/GRF. SZ demonstrated significantly elevated FW in whole-brain gray (p = .001) but not white matter (p = .060). There was no significant difference between groups in GSH in either voxel. However, there was a significant negative correlation between DLPFC GSH and both whole-brain and DLPFC-specific gray matter FW in SZ (r = -.48 and -.47, respectively; both p < .05), while this relationship was nonsignificant in HC and in both groups in the visual cortex. These data illustrate an important relationship between a metabolite known to be important for immune function-GSH-and the diffusion extracellular FW measure, which provides additional support for these measures as neuroinflammatory biomarkers that could potentially provide tractable treatment targets to guide pharmacological intervention

The isotropic-nematic interface in suspensions of hard rods: Mean-field properties and capillary waves

We present a study of the isotropic-nematic interface in a system of hard spherocylinders. First we compare results from Monte Carlo simulations and Onsager density functional theory for the interfacial profiles of the orientational order parameter and the density. Those interfacial properties that are not affected by capillary waves are in good agreement, despite the fact that Onsager theory overestimates the coexistence densities. Then we show results of a Monte Carlo study of the capillary waves of the interface. In agreement with recent theoretical investigations (Eur.Phys.J. E {\bf 18} 407 (2005)) we find a strongly anistropic capillary wave spectrum. For the wave-numbers accessed in our simulations, the spectrum is quadratic, i.e.elasticity does not play a role. We conjecture that this effect is due to the strong bending rigidity of the director field in suspensions of spherocylinders.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Rezultatele tratamentului pacienţilor cu insuficienţă renală acută

Summary. A study was performed in the department of Hemodialysis and Renal Transplant of Republican Clinical Hospital, Chişinău to analyse the ethiopathogenesis, different protocols of treatment and complications in the patients with ARF. The study was performed by extensively analysing the data of 417 patients, 260 males (61,77%) and 157 females (38,23%), who were admitted in the RCH over a period of 21 years (from 1979 to 2002). After the study it was found that the incidence of ARF the most common etiology was found to be polyetiologic shock (16,79%), exogenic intoxication (15,35%) and obstetric and gynecologic complications (12,23%). Mortality rate was found to be 22.2 %. Out of 417 patients with ARF, 10 patients progressed to CRF. 307 (73,62%) patients, out of the 417 were treated successfully