Plos One
-
Vascular leak is the hallmark of severe dengue infections and leads to complications such as shock and multi-organ failure. Although many mediators have been implicated in the vascular leak in dengue, the role of sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) has not been investigated. ⋯ As S1P has shown to be important in the endothelial barrier integrity and increases transendothelial resistance, low levels of S1P in acute dengue infection are likely to contribute to increased vascular permeability.
-
Many prior studies have compared the acuity of Emergency Department (ED) patients who have Left Without Being Seen (LWBS) against non-LWBS patients. A weakness in these studies is that patients may walk out prior to the assignment of a triage score, biasing comparisons. We report an operational change whereby acuity was assessed immediately upon patient arrival. We hypothesized more patients would receive acuity scores with EQAS. We also sought to compare LWBS and non-LWBS patient characteristics with reduced bias. ⋯ EQAS resulted in a higher proportion of patients receiving acuity scores, particularly among LWBS. This offers more complete data when comparing LWBS and non-LWBS patient characteristics. The comparison reinforced findings from prior studies.
-
A brand name can be considered a mental category. Similarity-based categorization theory has been used to explain how consumers judge a new product as a member of a known brand, a process called brand extension evaluation. This study was an event-related potential study conducted in two experiments. ⋯ In experiment 2, a prime-probe paradigm with a related task was used, in which product names included subcategory and major-category product names. The N400 elicited by subcategory products was more significantly negative than that elicited by major-category products, with no salient difference in P2. We speculated that P2 could reflect the early low-level and similarity-based processing in the first stage, whereas N400 could reflect the late analytic and category-based processing in the second stage.
-
Cardiac arrest induces whole body ischemia, which causes damage to multiple organs particularly the heart and the brain. There is clinical and preclinical evidence that neurological injury is responsible for high mortality and morbidity of patients even after successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A better understanding of the metabolic alterations in the brain during ischemia will enable the development of better targeted resuscitation protocols that repair the ischemic damage and minimize the additional damage caused by reperfusion. ⋯ The observation that metabolic alterations are seen primarily during cardiac arrest suggests that the events of ischemia are the major cause of neurological damage in our rat model of asphyxia-CPB resuscitation. Impaired glycolysis and increased lysophospholipids observed only in the brain suggest that altered energy metabolism and phospholipid degradation may be a central mechanism in unresuscitatable brain damage.
-
Headache is the most common symptom associated with air pollution, but little is understood about the underlying mechanism. Nasal administration of environmental irritants activates the trigeminovascular system by a TRPA1-dependent process. This report addresses questions about the anatomical pathway involved and the function of TRP channels in this pathway. ⋯ Double retrograde labeling from the nose and meninges reveals no co-localization of fluorescent label, however nasal and meningeal labeled cells are located in close proximity to each other within the trigeminal ganglion. Our data demonstrate that TRPV1 expressing neurons are important for TRPA1 responses in the nasal-meningeal pathway. Our data also suggest that the nasal-meningeal pathway is not primarily by axon reflex, but may instead result from intraganglionic transmission.