13,202 research outputs found
Laboratory tests in patients treated with isotretinoin: occurrence of liver and muscle abnormalities and failure of AST and ALT to predict liver abnormality.
Current laboratory monitoring may not be optimal. A retrospective chart review was performed on thelaboratory results of 246 patients who were treated with isotretinoin for acne over a 9-year period. Tests obtained were CBC, lipid panel, AST, ALT, CK, GGT,and C-reactive protein. Thirty-five patients had an elevated AST and 35 of these had an elevated CK; 32 had an elevated ALT and 11 of these had an elevated CK. Thirteen patients had an elevated GGT; in 5 this was the only abnormality, whereas 8 had a GGT elevation accompanied by an elevated AST or ALT. Two had an elevated GGT and an elevated CK with normal AST and ALT. Fifty-two patients had a single episode of elevated CK, of which 22 were female. However, 57 had multiple CK elevations and only one was female. Thirty-five patients had CK elevationsnormal; 38 had levels between 2 and 3 times normal, 18 had levels between 3 and 4 times normal, and 18 had levels greater than 4 times normal. We suggest that ALT and AST are not useful for monitoring isotretinoin therapy and that GGT and CK may be of greater value in managing patients
Antioxidants that protect mitochondria reduce interleukin-6 and oxidative stress, improve mitochondrial function, and reduce biochemical markers of organ dysfunction in a rat model of acute sepsis
Funding This study was funded by the Medical Research Council (Grant number G0800149). Research material from this study is not available. Acknowledgement We are very grateful to Dr Robin A.J. Smith, Department of Chemistry, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, for the generous gifts of MitoE and MitoQ, without which this work would not have been possible.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Pharmacological activation of endogenous protective pathways against oxidative stress under conditions of sepsis
Funding The study was funded entirely by institutional funds.Peer reviewedPostprin
Melatonin as a potential therapy for sepsis : a phase I dose escalation study and an ex vivo whole blood model under conditions of sepsis
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This study was funded by the Chief Scientist Office, NHS Scotland. We would like to thank all the volunteers who gave up their time and blood to take part in the study and the data monitoring committee and staff of the intensive care unit for their support. In addition, thanks to Dr Malachy Columb for performing Page's trend test for us and to Annette Fearnley at Nu-Pharm Ltd for her advice.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Comparing and characterizing some constructions of canonical bases from Coxeter systems
The Iwahori-Hecke algebra of a Coxeter system has a
"standard basis" indexed by the elements of and a "bar involution" given by
a certain antilinear map. Together, these form an example of what Webster calls
a pre-canonical structure, relative to which the well-known Kazhdan-Lusztig
basis of is a canonical basis. Lusztig and Vogan have defined a
representation of a modified Iwahori-Hecke algebra on the free
-module generated by the set of twisted involutions in
, and shown that this module has a unique pre-canonical structure satisfying
a certain compatibility condition, which admits its own canonical basis which
can be viewed as a generalization of the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis. One can modify
the parameters defining Lusztig and Vogan's module to obtain other
pre-canonical structures, each of which admits a unique canonical basis indexed
by twisted involutions. We classify all of the pre-canonical structures which
arise in this fashion, and explain the relationships between their resulting
canonical bases. While some of these canonical bases are related in a trivial
fashion to Lusztig and Vogan's construction, others appear to have no simple
relation to what has been previously studied. Along the way, we also clarify
the differences between Webster's notion of a canonical basis and the related
concepts of an IC basis and a -kernel.Comment: 32 pages; v2: additional discussion of relationship between canonical
bases, IC bases, and P-kernels; v3: minor revisions; v4: a few corrections
and updated references, final versio
Tracking the source of the hepatitis B virus-specific CD8 T cells during lamivudine treatment
Lamivudine treatment in chronic hepatitis B leads to the reconstitution of virus-specific T cells in the circulation, but it is not clear whether this is the preferential result of T cell efflux from the liver or lymph nodes. To address this question, the frequency and function of liver-, lymph node-, and blood-derived hepatitis B virus (HBV)-specific CD8 T cells were analyzed in patients treated with lamivudine and undergoing liver transplantation. HBV-specific CD8 T cells, identified in portal lymph nodes, were able to expand in vitro after antigen-specific stimulation and displayed a heterogeneous profile of cytokine production. These findings suggest that the peripherally reconstituted HBV-specific CD8 T cells can originate from precursor cells within lymph nodes
Unravelling Active Galactic Nuclei
A complete flat-spectrum radio-loud sample of AGN includes a significant
fraction of Seyfert-like AGN including a NLS1. Analysis of their optical
spectra suggests that the reddest continuum colours are either associated with
AGN in nearby resolved galaxies, or distant quasars showing relatively narrow
permitted emission lines.Comment: Poster contribution presented at the Joint MPE,AIP,ESO workshop on
NLS1s, Bad Honnef, Dec. 1999, to appear in New Astronomy Reviews; also
available at http://wave.xray.mpe.mpg.de/conferences/nls1-worksho
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