Plos One
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Platelet indices, including mean platelet volume (MPV), are readily available blood tests, although their prognostic value in patients with septic shock has not been fully explored. Current evidence has found contradictory results. This study aims to explore the behavior of platelet indices in septic shock and their clinical prognostic value. ⋯ A statistically significant difference was seen between survivors and non-survivors for platelet indices which make them easily available and useful prognostic markers for patients in septic shock.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Sleep dissolves illusion: sleep withstands learning of visuo-tactile-proprioceptive integration induced by repeated days of rubber hand illusion training.
Multisensory integration is a key factor in establishing bodily self-consciousness and in adapting humans to novel environments. The rubber hand illusion paradigm, in which humans can immediately perceive illusory ownership to an artificial hand, is a traditional technique for investigating multisensory integration and the feeling of illusory ownership. However, the long-term learning properties of the rubber hand illusion have not been previously investigated. ⋯ A significantly greater reduction in galvanic skin response was observed after wakefulness compared to after sleep. Our results suggest that although repetitive rubber hand illusion training facilitates multisensory integration and physiological habituation of a multisensory incongruent environment, sleep corrects illusional integration and habituation based on experiences in a multisensory incongruent environment. These findings may increase our understanding of adaptive neural processes to novel environments, specifically, bodily self-consciousness and sleep-dependent neuroplasticity.
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Clinical Trial
Detection of Puumala hantavirus antigen in human intestine during acute hantavirus infection.
Puumala virus (PUUV) is the most important hantavirus species in Central Europe. Nephropathia epidemica (NE), caused by PUUV, is characterized by acute renal injury (AKI) with thrombocytopenia and frequently gastrointestinal symptoms. ⋯ In patients with NE, PUUV nucleocapsid antigen and PUUV RNA was detected frequently in the intestine. This finding could explain frequent GI-symptoms in NE patients, thus demonstration of a more generalized PUUV infection. The RT-PCR was an effective and sensitive method to detect PUUV RNA in FFPE tissues. Therefore, it can be used as a diagnostic and phylogenetic approach also for archival materials. AKI was not more often present in patients with PUUV-positive IHC. This last finding should be investigated in larger numbers of patients with PUUV infection.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A stabilization device that promotes the efficiency of cardiopulmonary resuscitation during ambulance transportation to the level as under non-moving conditions.
The survival rate of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is low, and measures to improve the quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during ambulance transportation are desirable. We designed a stabilization device, and in a randomized crossover trial we found performing CPR in a moving ambulance with the device (MD) could achieve better efficiency than that without the device (MND), but the efficiency was lower than that in a non-moving ambulance (NM). ⋯ The use of the modified device can improve quality of CPR in a moving ambulance to a level similar to that in a non-moving condition without increasing the severity of back pain.
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The recent discovery of CALR mutations in essential thrombocythemia (ET) and primary myelofibrosis (PMF) patients without JAK2/MPL mutations has emerged as a relevant finding for the molecular diagnosis of these myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). We tested the feasibility of high-resolution melting (HRM) as a screening method for rapid detection of CALR mutations. ⋯ This study establishes a sensitive, reliable and rapid HRM method to screen for the presence of CALR mutations.