A patient with symptoms suggestive of neuroleptic malignant syndrome after levodopa withdrawal is described. The patient presented with persistent high fever, stupor, autonomic dysfunction, rigidity, and rhabdomyolysis. He was successfully treated with intravenous dantrolene, resumption of levodopa, and forced alkaline diuresis. Doctors should be aware of the risk of abrupt cessation of dopamin...

Seizures may cause brain damage due to mechanisms initiated by excessive excitatory synaptic transmission. One such mechanism is the activation of death-promoting intracellular cascades by the influx and the perturbed homeostasis of Ca2+. The neuroprotective effects of preventing the entry of Ca2+ from voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels, NMDA receptors, and non-NMDA receptors, is well known. Less ...

BACKGROUND Facilities with volatile anesthetic agents stock dantrolene for the treatment of malignant hyperthermia (MH). The availability of dantrolene at these facilities satisfies cost-utility norms even for sites with as few as 1 anesthetic per workday, based on the overall incidence of MH per anesthetic. We considered the stocking of dantrolene at facilities with succinylcholine alone (i.e....

Protein hypercatabolism significantly contributes to the onset and progression of muscle wasting in cancer cachexia. In this regard, a major role is played by the ATP-ubiquitin-proteasome-dependent pathway and by autophagy. However, little is known about the relevance of the Ca2+-dependent proteolytic system. Since previous results suggested that this pathway is activated in the skeletal muscle...

Classical conditioning of the mollusc, Hermissenda crassicornis, is a model system used to study cellular correlates of associative learning. Paired presentation of light and turbulence, but not unpaired presentations, causes Hermissenda to contract its foot in response to light alone. Intracellular recordings from the type B photoreceptors of the Hermissenda eye reveal a learning specific incr...

Recent papers have attributed arrhythmic substrate in murine RyR2-P2328S hearts to reduced action potential (AP) conduction velocities (CV), reflecting acute functional inhibition and/or reduced expression of sodium channels. We explored for acute effects of direct exchange protein directly activated by cAMP (Epac)-mediated ryanodine receptor-2 (RyR2) activation on arrhythmic substrate and CV. ...

BACKGROUND Succinylcholine causes immediate and severe arterial hypotension in swine with the malignant hyperthermia phenotype. The underlying mechanisms are unknown. METHODS Malignant hyperthermia-susceptible (MHS; n = 10) and normal swine (n = 5) were anesthetized with thiopental. The following were monitored: electrocardiogram; arterial blood pressure; pulmonary artery, central venous, and...

Worldwide Epidemiology of Atrial Fibrillation: A Global Burden of Disease 2010 Study Sumeet S. Chugh, MD; Rasmus Havmoeller, MD, PhD; Kumar Narayanan, MD; David Singh, MD; Michiel Rienstra, MD, PhD; Emelia J. Benjamin, MD, ScM; Richard F. Gillum, MD; Young-Hoon Kim, MD; John H. McAnulty, Jr, MD; Zhi-Jie Zheng, MD, PhD; Mohammad H. Forouzanfar, MD; Mohsen Naghavi, MD; George A. Mensah, MD; Majid...