Anesthesiology
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Cerebral ischemic tolerance can be induced by a variety of noxious stimuli, but no clinically applicable regimen for preconditioning has been described. Therefore, the authors tested the ability of a pharmacologic preconditioning strategy using the well-known macrolide antibiotic erythromycin to induce tolerance against transient global cerebral ischemia in vivo. They also investigated whether tolerance induction by erythromycin involves transcriptional and translational changes of cerebral B-cell leukemia/lymphoma-2 (bcl-2) expression. ⋯ Erythromycin can induce cerebral ischemic tolerance in vivo (pharmacologic preconditioning), suggesting a potential clinical strategy of preemptive neuroprotection. Changes in bcl-2 expression after erythromycin were small and transient. The induction of bcl-2-related pathways, although important for other preconditioning regimens, may therefore be less relevant for the neuroprotective effects of pharmacologic preconditioning using erythromycin.
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Pain during labor is a common and severe phenomenon, but its clinical management remains haphazard because its neurophysiology is poorly understood. In the current study, the authors evaluate the parturient rat as a relevant model to study the pharmacology of labor pain. ⋯ These results indicate that stretches during labor in the rat correspond to a behavioral response to nociception associated with uterine contractions and suggest that parturition in the rat could be a relevant model to investigate nociceptive mechanisms associated with parturition in women.