An 80-year-old man with acute type A aortic dissection, who was preoperatively observed in the intensive care unit, suddenly became unresponsive. The patient was immediately intubated, but a pulse ...check was delayed because the cardiac monitor seemingly showed a normal sinus rhythm. Bedside echocardiography, while continuing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, revealed massive pericardial effusion. It indicated the patient's cardiac arrest was pulseless electrical activity (PEA) due to cardiac tamponade. After pericardiocentesis, a perfusion rhythm was restored with palpable distal pulse. He successfully underwent a prosthetic graft replacement of the ascending aorta and was discharged after physical rehabilitation.
Aim: The purpose of this work is to develop an ultra-compact wearable pneumatic drive unit for ventricular assist device. Methods: The drive unit consists of a brushless DC motor, a crankshaft, a ...cylinder-piston, noncircular gears and air pressure regulation valves. The reciprocating motion of the cylinder-piston makes the air pressure which drives the blood pump. The noncircular gears make systolic ratio and the air pressure regulation valves regulate the maximum and minimum pressure in the cylinder-piston. The weight of the drive unit is approximately 1.7 kg. Results: The drive unit was tested in an overflow type circulation mock test using a Toyobo VAD blood pump of 70 mL of stroke volume. Pre-load and after-load were set at 10 mm Hg and 120 mm Hg, respectively. The maximum flow rate was 7 1/min at 100 bpm. The drive unit was also examined by an in vivo animal experiment. A Holstein calf weighing 80kg with the Toyobo VAD blood pump wore the drive unit on his back. The pumping rate and the systolic ratio were set at 80 bpm and 40%, respectively. The calf survived for more than 1 month in good general condition. The bypass flow was maintained 3-4 l/min. The electric power consumption of the drive unit was maintained at around 12 W. Conclusion: The performance of the ultra-compact wearable pneumatic drive unit was confirmed in vitro experiment and in vivo animal study. These results indicate that the developed drive unit has a potential to become a mechanical circulatory support system of the human heart.
Little is known about the neural correlates of tics and associated urges. In the present study, we aimed to explore the neural basis of tics in patients with Tourette syndrome by using event-related ...functional MRI (fMRI). Ten patients (6 women, 4 men; age: mean ± SD = 31 ± 11.2) were studied while spontaneously exhibiting a variety of motor and vocal tics. On the basis of synchronized video/audio recordings, fMRI activities were analysed 2 s before and at tic onset irrespective of the clinical phenomenology. We identified a brain network of paralimbic areas such as anterior cingulate and insular cortex, supplementary motor area (SMA) and parietal operculum (PO) predominantly activated before tic onset (P < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons). In contrast, at the beginning of tic action, significant fMRI activities were found in sensorimotor areas including superior parietal lobule bilaterally and cerebellum. The results of this study indicate that paralimbic and sensory association areas are critically implicated in tic generation, similar to movements triggered internally by unpleasant sensations, as has been shown for pain or itching.
Sox9 is a member of the
Sry-type HMG-box (Sox) gene family. It encodes a transcription factor and is thought to be important for sexual differentiation in chicken. In the present study we have ...isolated
Sox9 cDNAs from quail and duck, and examined the expression patterns of the corresponding genes in early embryonic gonads by whole-mount in situ hybridization. We developed a polymerase chain reaction-based protocol to identify the sex of quail and duck embryos before its morphological manifestation.
Sox9 expression was first detected on days 5 and 7 in the gonads of male quail and duck embryos, respectively, and was not apparent in female gonads at these stages. These expression patterns are similar to that of chicken
Sox9. Our results thus suggest that the expression of quail and duck
Sox9 is associated with testis differentiation.
The c-Met proto-oncogene is the receptor for hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), which is a member of the tyrosine kinase family. Activation of the HGF/c-Met signal pathway leads to cell proliferation, ...motility, regeneration, and morphogenesis. In this study, the complete nucreotide sequence of complementary DNA (cDNA) of canine c-Met was cloned, and its distribution was determined in tissues. The canine c-Met cDNA clone had an open reading frame of 4419 bp that encoded a putative polypeptide of 1383 amino acids. The c-Met mRNA was expressed in a variety of canine tissues including peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), bone marrow, liver, kidney, lung, stomach, uterus, testis, thymus, lymph node, small intestine, colon, adrenal gland, thyroid gland, heart, muscle, skin, pancreas, ovary, prostate, spleen, fat, cerebrum, and cerebellum. In addition, the c-Met mRNA expression in normal and regenerated liver was examined. The levels of the mRNA increased 2-fold in regenerated liver compared to that found in normal liver, indicating that c-Met is involved in various functions including remodeling of canine hepatocytes.
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