Int J Med Sci
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The optimal use and monitoring of cyclosporine A (CyA) have remained unclear and the current strategy of CyA treatment requires frequent dose adjustment following an empirical initial dosage adjusted for total body weight (TBW). The primary aim of this study was to evaluate age and anthropometric parameters as predictors for dose adjustment of CyA; and the secondary aim was to compare the usefulness of the concentration at predose (C0) and 2-hour postdose (C2) monitoring. An open-label, non-randomized, retrospective study was performed in 81 renal transplant patients in Japan during 2001-2010. ⋯ In conclusion, after oral administration, C2 monitoring has a large variation and could be at high risk for overdosing. Therefore, after oral dosing of CyA, it was not considered to be a useful approach for single monitoring, but should rather be used with C0 monitoring. The regression analyses between AUC0-9 of CyA and anthropometric parameters indicated that IBW was potentially the superior predictor for dose adjustment of CyA in an empiric strategy using TBW (IBW; r=0.5181, TBW; r=0.3192); however, this finding seems to lack the pharmacokinetic rationale and thus warrants further basic and clinical investigations.
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Long-term maintenance of neural stem cells in vitro is crucial for their stage specific roles in neurogenesis. To have an in-depth understanding of optimal conditional microenvironmental niche for long-term maintenance of neural stem cells (NSCs), we imposed different combinatorial treatment of growth factors to EGF/FGF-responsive cells. We hypothesized, that IGF-1-treatment can provide an optimal niche for long-term maintenance and proliferation of EGF/FGF-responsive NSCs. ⋯ Our findings support the hypothesis that the enforcement of IGF-1 treatment to the EGF/FGF-responsive NSCs, can lead to enhanced cell proliferation during early stages of neurogenesis, and an extended life span in vitro. This information will be beneficial for improving future therapeutic implication of NSCs, by addressing improved in vitro production of NSCs.
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Mature circulating endothelial cells (CEC) and circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) have been described in several conditions associated with endothelial injury. Their role in deep vein thrombosis (DVT) has not been previously evaluated. ⋯ Our results suggest the participation of these cells in the reparative processes that follows DVT, both at immediate and late time-points. The different kinetics of CEC and EPC release in experimental DVT suggests a heterogeneous role for these cells in the reparative events after DVT.
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In the last 100 years, intensive studies have been done on the identification of the systematic approaches to find the cure for the chronic heart failure, however the mystery remains unresolved due to its complicated pathogenesis and ineffective early diagnosis. The present investigation was aimed to evaluate the potential effects of the traditional chinese medicine, Xinmailong, on the chronic heart failure (CHF) patients as compared to the standard western medical treatment available so far. In our study, we selected two groups of voluntary CHF patients at the Xiangya Hospital, which were allowed to administrate Xinmailong or standard treatments, respectively. ⋯ The timeline for the full dose administration was set to 15 days and five measurements as indicated above were taken on every 0, 7th and 15th day of the drug administration respectively. In the conducted study, similar symptomatic measurements were observed on day 0 in both treatment groups, and slight improvements were observed on 7th day. It was observed that after a full course of drug administration for 15 days, both of the treatment groups achieved statistically significant improvements in all the five measures, but Xinmailong was found to be more (almost double) statistically significant as compared with the available drug treatments for chronic heart failure.
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Postoperative pleural adhesions lead to major problems in repeated thoracic surgery. To date, no antiadhesive product has been proven clinically effective. Previous studies of differently charged polypeptides, poly-L-lysine (PL) and poly-L-glutamate (PG) have shown promising results reducing postoperative abdominal adhesions in experimental settings. This pilot study examined the possible pleural adhesion prevention by using the PL+PG concept after pleural surgery and its possible effect on key parameters; plasmin activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and tissue growth factor beta 1 (TGFb) in the fibrinolytic process. ⋯ PL+PG may be used to prevent pleural adhesions. The process of fibrinolysis, and fibrosis was though not affected after PLPG administration.