Stable Isotopes in Paediatric Nutritional and Metabolic Research

Uses of stable isotopes in clinical diagnosis and research in the paediatric population.

The landmark experiments of Schoenheimer and Rittenberg in the 1930s provided the scientific foundation for the ensuing development and application of stable isotope techniques in clinical diagnosis and research. Stable isotopes are non-radioactive atoms of the same chemical element, which diVer only in their number of neutrons. Many elements also have radioactive (non-stable) isotopes. Aspects...

Stable isotopes in clinical research: safety reaffirmed.

Approaching half a century of stable-isotope usage in human metabolic studies has been without documented significant adverse effect. Side-effects with acute D dosing are transitory with no demonstrated evidence of permanent deleterious action. The threshold of D toxicity has been defined in animals and is far in excess of concentrations conceivably used in human studies. The possibility that D...

Elucidating the nutritional dynamics of fungi using stable isotopes.

Mycorrhizal and saprotrophic (SAP) fungi are essential to terrestrial element cycling due to their uptake of mineral nutrients and decomposition of detritus. Linking these ecological roles to specific fungi is necessary to improve our understanding of global nutrient cycling, fungal ecophysiology, and forest ecology. Using discriminant analyses of nitrogen (delta(15)N) and carbon (delta(13)C) i...

The use of stable isotopes in biological and medical research.

The use of stable isotopes for diagnosis and clinical research.

Stable, non-radioactive isotopes, so long overshadowed by radionuclides, have recently become much more widely used in clinical science. This renewed interest has been stimulated by improvements both in the increased availability and diversity of stable-isotopelabelled compounds and in mass-spectrometric methods for their quantitative analysis. In addition, there is an increasing awareness of t...