Adv Exp Med Biol
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We report the use of a novel hybrid near-infrared spectrometer for the measurement of optical scattering, pathlength and chromophore concentration in critically ill patients with brain injury. Ten mechanically ventilated patients with acute brain injury were studied. In addition to standard neurointensive care monitoring, middle cerebral artery flow velocity, brain lactate-pyruvate ratio (LPR) and brain tissue oxygen tension were monitored. ⋯ NBH induced significant changes in the concentrations of oxyhaemoglobin, deoxyhaemoglobin and oxidised-reduced cytochrome c oxidase; these were accompanied by a corresponding reduction in brain LPR and increase in brain tissue oxygen tension. No significant change in optical scattering or pathlength was observed. These results suggest that the measurement of chromophore concentration in the injured brain is not confounded by changes in optical scattering or pathlength and that NBH induces an increase in cerebral aerobic metabolism.
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Portable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) devices were originally developed for use in exercise and sports science by Britton Chance in the 1990s (the RunMan and microRunman series). However, only recently with the development of more robust, and wireless systems, has the routine use in elite sport become possible. As with the medical use of NIRS, finding applications of the technology that are relevant to practitioners is the key issue. ⋯ It therefore has the possibility to be used to assess exercise training-induced adaptations following a specific training protocol. However, it is at present unclear, given the individual variability, whether NIRS can be used to assess individual performance. We recommend that future studies report individual as well as group data.
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Tissue oxygenation during exercise measured with NIRS: reproducibility and influence of wavelengths.
Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is widely used for the measurement of skeletal muscle oxygenation during exercise as it reflects muscle metabolism, and most studies report a large variability between subjects. Here we assess the data quality of tissue oxygen saturation (SO2) and oxygenated (oxyHb) and deoxygenated (deoxyHb) haemoglobin concentrations recorded during an incremental cycling protocol in nine healthy volunteers. ⋯ We found that the inter-subject variation in SO2 (standard deviation ≈ 6 %) was considerably larger than the reproducibility (≈ 1.5 %) both for the same-day and different-day tests. The reproducibility of changes in SO2 was better than 1 %.
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Jørgensen and Dau (J Acoust Soc Am 130:1475-1487, 2011) proposed the speech-based envelope power spectrum model (sEPSM) in an attempt to overcome the limitations of the classical speech transmission index (STI) and speech intelligibility index (SII) in conditions with nonlinearly processed speech. Instead of considering the reduction of the temporal modulation energy as the intelligibility metric, as assumed in the STI, the sEPSM applies the signal-to-noise ratio in the envelope domain (SNRenv). This metric was shown to be the key for predicting the intelligibility of reverberant speech as well as noisy speech processed by spectral subtraction. ⋯ However, since the STMI applies the same decision metric as the STI, it fails to account for spectral subtraction. The results from this study suggest that the SNRenv might reflect a powerful decision metric, while some explicit across-frequency analysis seems crucial in some conditions. How such across-frequency analysis is "realized" in the auditory system remains unresolved.
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Phosphodiesterases (PDEs) are enzymes responsible for degradation of cAMP and cGMP in cells. Thus, PDE inhibitors may have significant clinical benefit in respiratory diseases associated with inflammation. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of selective PDE4 (rolipram, ROL) and PDE7 inhibitors (BRL50481, BRL) on citric acid-induced cough, in vivo and in vitro airway smooth muscle reactivity in both healthy and ovalbumin sensitized guinea pigs. ⋯ In healthy guinea pigs, the only significant relaxation was observed after ROL in ACH-induced contractions in vitro and the effect on cough was negligible. In ovalbumin-sensitized animals, more pronounced in vitro relaxing effects of BRL in HIS-induced contractions and of combination (ROL+BRL) in ACH-induced contractions were observed, with similar results in vivo, and no significant change in the number of cough efforts was observed in any of the groups tested. The results suggest that PDE4 and PDE7 inhibitors have stronger anti-inflammatory effects compared with direct effects on smooth muscle and cough, with a potential benefit of their concomitant administration.