Anesthesiology
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Biography Historical Article
"Gentlemen! This Is No Humbug": Did John Collins Warren, M.D., Proclaim These Words on October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston?
The proclamation, "Gentlemen! this is no humbug," attributed to John Collins Warren, M. D., was not identified in any contemporaneous eyewitness report of William T. G. ⋯ D., reported Warren's alleged proclamation. However, their accounts first appeared in 1896, 50 yr after Morton's demonstration of etherization. Although Warren's alleged proclamation appears plausible, the overall impression from eyewitness statements and publications relating to the October 16, 1846, demonstration of etherization is that it may not have been made.
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Drugs acting on μ-opioid receptors (MORs) are widely used as analgesics but present side effects including life-threatening respiratory depression. MORs are G-protein-coupled receptors inhibiting neuronal activity through calcium channels, adenylyl cyclase, and/or G-protein-gated inwardly rectifying potassium (GIRK) channels. The pathways underlying MOR-dependent inhibition of rhythmic breathing are unknown. ⋯ Overall, these results identify that GIRK channels contribute to respiratory inhibition by MOR, an essential step toward understanding respiratory depression by opioids.
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Although neonatal exposure to anesthetic drugs is associated with memory deficiency in rodent models and possibly in pediatric patients, the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. The authors tested their hypothesis that exposure of the developing brain to anesthesia triggers epigenetic modification, involving the enhanced interaction among transcription factors (histone deacetylase 2, methyl-cytosine-phosphate-guanine-binding protein 2, and DNA methyltransferase 1) in Bdnf promoter region(s) that inhibit brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression, resulting in insufficient drive for local translation of synaptic mRNAs. The authors further hypothesized that noninvasive environmental enrichment (EE) will attenuate anesthesia-induced epigenetic inhibition of BDNF signaling and memory loss in rodent models. ⋯ The findings of this study elucidated the epigenetic mechanism underlying memory deficiency induced by neonatal anesthesia and propose EE as a potential therapeutic approach.
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Biography Historical Article
Legacies of Charles Bernard Pittinger, M.D., M.S., F.A.C.A., D.A.B.A. (1913-1990).