Medical hypotheses
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There are conflicting reports about the efficacy of electronic cigarettes (e-cigs) as nicotine delivery devices and smoking cessation products. In addition, smokers' responses to some nicotine dependence questions often change as they transition to exclusive e-cig use. Nicotyrine may explain these observations. ⋯ Behavioral and pharmacokinetic e-cig studies should be interpreted with attention to likely levels of nicotyrine delivery: e-cig studies may need to routinely measure nicotyrine exposure, assess CYP2A6 activity, confirm nicotine delivery, or deliberately compare unoxidized and oxidized e-liquids. The risks of nicotyrine exposure include impaired clearance of all CYP2A substrates and any effects of the metabolic products of nicotyrine. CYP2A inhibitors like nicotyrine may be useful for future smoking cessation therapy.
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Mild traumatic brain injury, often referred to as concussion, is a common, potentially debilitating, and costly condition. One of the main challenges in diagnosing and managing concussion is that there is not currently an objective test to determine the presence of a concussion and to guide return-to-play decisions for athletes. Traditional neuroimaging tests, such as brain magnetic resonance imaging, are normal in concussion, and therefore diagnosis and management are guided by reported symptoms. ⋯ We hypothesize that a combination of ultrasonographic measurements (optic nerve sheath diameter and transcranial Doppler assessment of cerebrovascular reactivity) into a single index will allow for an accurate and non-invasive measurement of intracranial pressure and cerebrovascular reactivity, and this index will be clinically relevant and useful for guiding concussion diagnosis and management. Ultrasound is an ideal modality for the evaluation of concussion because it is portable (allowing for evaluation in many settings, such as on the playing field or in a combat zone), radiation-free (making repeat scans safe), and relatively inexpensive (resulting in nearly universal availability). This paper reviews the literature supporting our hypothesis that an ultrasonographic index can assist in the diagnosis and management of concussion, and it also presents limited data regarding the initial use of this index in healthy controls.
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Femoral neck fractures in young adults with normal bone are mostly vertically oriented and may have variable amounts of comminution, which result from shearing forces during high-energy trauma. These factors play a role in the high rate of complications after this injury, including nonunion, malunion, failure of fixation, and avascular necrosis. These problems often occur together and inter-relate, for example, nonunion or malunion frequently result from fixation failure and varus collapse of the femoral head after reconstruction. ⋯ This technique has not been widely applied to this injury pattern. We propose that the concepts of modern fracture care should be applied together for vertical femoral neck fractures in young adults. Specifically, we propose that anatomic reduction and fixation of vertically oriented femoral neck fractures with the addition of a medial buttress plate to resist shearing forces will improve on the historically high rate of complications after these difficult injuries.
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The currently used vaccine for prevention of tuberculosis is Bacillus Calmette Guerin, which has been associated with a protective effect of 51% against tuberculosis. New vaccination strategies based on an enhancement of adaptive T-cell based immunity have been unsuccessful in increasing the efficiency of BCG immunisation. The proposed hypothesis is that a reduction of Mycobacterium (M.) tuberculosis infection in Bacillus Calmette Guerin immunized people is due to training of innate immunity. ⋯ Innate immunity could be enhanced by administration of murabutide and groups with and without murabutide enhanced BCG immunisation and with and without elimination of T-suppressor cells compared. The contribution of training of innate immunity in reduction of infection could hereby be demonstrated by treatment of mice prior to immunisation with an inhibitor of epigenetic programming. Confirmation of the hypothesis could provide the foundation of a new approach to an improved vaccine against M. tuberculosis infection.
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Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are an assorted set of clinical conditions characterized mainly by pain in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). TMJ inflammation or synovitis is frequently observed in TMD patients and is the major reason for TMD pain. TMD is prevalent in women of childbearing age, at least twice than in men, implying that estrogen may be involved in TMD pain processing. ⋯ The voltage-gated sodium channel 1.7 (Nav1.7), whose single disruption leads to a complete loss of pain, amplifies weak stimuli in the neurons and acts as the threshold channel for firing action potentials and plays a prominent role in pain perception, including inflammatory pain. Furthermore, our previous study showed that trigeminal ganglionic Nav1.7 was involved in the hyperalgesia of the inflamed TMJ. We propose that estrogen may enhance hyperalgesia of inflamed TMJ through decrease nociceptive threshold of TMJ or inflamed TMJ by modulating both expression and channel threshold of Nav1.7 in trigeminal ganglion.