BACKGROUND Thoracic epidural analgesia (TEA) is effective in alleviating pain after major thoracoabdominal surgery and may also reduce postoperative mortality and morbidity. This study investigated cardiovascular autonomic control in patients undergoing elective thoracic surgery and its modulation by continuous TEA. METHODS Thirty-eight patients were randomly assigned to receive patient-contr...

INTRODUCTION Liver gas gangrene is a rare condition with a highly mortality rate. It is mostly associated with host factors, such as malignancy and immunosuppression. PRESENTATION OF CASE A 57-year-old female was admitted to our hospital with abnormalities of her serum hepato-biliary enzymes. She had a history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cerebral infarction, and chronic renal failure....

A dual-plane snapshot POD analysis of turbulent pipe flow at a Reynolds number of 104,000 is presented. The high-speed PIV data were simultaneously acquired in two planes, a crossstream plane (2D-3C) and a streamwise plane (2D-2C) on the pipe centerline. The cross-stream plane analysis revealed large structures with a spatio-temporal extent of 1-2R, where R is the pipe radius. The temporal evol...

Members of the Ste20 and NDR protein kinase families are important for normal cell differentiation and morphogenesis in various organisms. We characterized POD6 (NCU02537.2), a novel member of the GCK family of Ste20 kinases that is essential for hyphal tip extension and coordinated branch formation in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa. pod-6 and the NDR kinase mutant cot-1 exhibit indis...

Peptide for ocular delivery (POD) is a novel cationic cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) which, when conjugated with polyethylene glycol (PEG-POD), can deliver plasmid DNA to the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) of adult murine retina. PEG-POD nanoparticles containing an expression cassette for glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (PEG-POD~GDNF) were investigated for their ability to inhibit...

As in other organ systems, gene and drug delivery to ocular tissues such as the retina and cornea is hampered by inefficient penetration of therapeutic molecules across the plasma membrane. We describe the use of a novel peptide for ocular delivery (POD) with protein transduction properties, for delivery of small and large molecules across the plasma membrane. POD enters cells within 5 minutes ...

BACKGROUND An alternative to embolization or external pelvic fixation (EPF) in patients with multiple pelvic fractures and hemorrhage is a pelvic orthotic device (POD), which may easily be placed in the resuscitation area. Little published information is available about its effectiveness. This study evaluated the efficacy of the POD compared with EPF in patients with life-threatening pelvic fra...

OBJECTIVE Postoperative delirium (POD) is a highly prevalent complex neuropsychiatric syndrome in elderly patients. However, its pathophysiology is currently unknown. Early detection and prevention of POD is important; therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the link between preoperative insulin growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels in the serum and POD in the Chinese elderly patients. M...

The changes in the activity of peroxidase (POD) extracted from the cell wall and the level of H(2)O(2) of rice seedling roots treated with abscisic acid (ABA) and their correlation with root growth were investigated. Increasing concentrations of ABA from 3 to 18 µM progressively reduce root growth and increase POD activities (using guaiacol or ferulic acid as a substrate) extracted from the cel...

PURPOSE To evaluate the effects of metoclopramide on metalloproteinases (MMP) and interleukins (IL) gene expression in colonic anastomoses in rats. METHODS Eighty rats were divided into two groups for euthanasia on the 3rd or 7th postoperative day (POD), then into two subgroups for sepsis induction or not, and then into subgroups to receive either metoclopramide or saline solution. Left colon...