Articles: cations.
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Pediatr. Surg. Int. · Feb 2010
Application with repeated serum biomarkers in pediatric appendicitis in clinical surgery.
From 2005 to 2007, we prospectively collected 217 pediatric patients with clinically suspected appendicitis. The repeated serum laboratory tests were measured 6 h later and the changes in serum inflammatory biomarkers analyzed. Significant changes in serum parameters between primary and repeated examinations were selected as the discriminating variables. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine the cutoff values of the changes between two examinations in predicting appendicitis. ⋯ Significant change between primary and repeated serum laboratory tests may serve as a helpful method in predicting acute appendicitis in children with suspected appendicitis.
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Effective wound healing has been a lasting and challenging topic in health care. Various strategies have been used to accelerate and perfect the healing process. One such strategy has involved the application of an exogenous electrical stimulus to chronic wounds with the aim of stimulating healing responses. THE PROBLEM: The biology of electric stimulation to instigate healing, however, is very poorly understood. How does electric stimulation induce healing responses? BASIC/CLINICAL SCIENCE ADVANCES: Recent research shows that the electric fields (EFs) activate multiple signaling pathways that are critical for wound healing. Importantly, the EFs provide a powerful, sometimes an overriding, directional signal for cell migration in wound healing. Unlike other stimuli, EFs have the intrinsic property of being directional. The EF-directed cell migration (electrotaxis/galvanotaxis) appears to be a consequence of EF-induced polarized signaling of epidermal growth factor receptors, integrins, and phosphoinositide 3 kinase/Pten, and may be mediated by protein kinase C, intracellular Ca(2+), and cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). Because directional cell migration is a key component in wound healing, galvanotaxis may represent an important mechanism of wound healing. CLINICAL CARE RELEVANCE: With the constantly enlarging diabetic and aging population, chronic or nonhealing wounds pose increasing health and economic problems, and currently there is no effective therapy available. Electric stimulation activates important intracellular signaling pathways that are polarized in the EF direction, resulting in enhanced and stimulated directional cell migration. Electric stimulation offers a novel approach to achieve better and accelerated wound healing. ⋯ Experimental evidence suggests a significant role of endogenous EFs in cell migration in wound healing. Most importantly, EFs are a very powerful signal to direct cell migration. Electric stimulation therefore may represent a promising and unique strategy to induce cell and tissue growth in a directional manner, to enhance wound healing, and to achieve better wound healing.
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Individualized medicine provides a powerful engine revolutionizing the practice of clinical pharmacology, tailoring genetic and molecular profiles of patients to improve therapeutic specificity, reduce treatment variability and minimize adverse drug events. In that context, advances in individualized medicine have transformed the science of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics from drug discovery through identification of drugable targets, development through stratification of disease risk, regulation through identifying pathways mediating off-target effects and utilization through personalizing drug regimens. ⋯ Insights in the mechanistic basis of cell, tissue and organ function, and their interface with the environment are being translated to define disease risk, identify processes mediating disease susceptibility, target mechanism-based therapies, and tailor prevention and control paradigms, providing previously unanticipated opportunities for patient-specific disease management. The emerging field of individualized medicine is transforming the practice of clinical pharmacology, driving the leading edge of discovery from the laboratory bench to the evidence basis of practice in the clinic, extending to populations, to transform healthcare and create predictive, personalized and pre-emptive solutions for tailored patient-specific therapeutic strategies.
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By this notice, the Editor and the Publisher of European Journal of Pediatric Surgery retract from publication the following article: Cevizci N, Dokucu A I, Baskin D, Karadağ C A, Sever N, Yalçin M, Bahadir E, Başak M. Virtual bronchoscopy as a dynamic modality in the diagnosis and treatment of suspected foreign body aspiration. Eur J Pediatr Surg 2008; 18: 398-401. ⋯ Comparison of multidetector computed tomography-virtual bronchoscopy and conventional bronchoscopy in children with suspected foreign body aspiration. Emerg Radiol Epub 2008 Nov 19. We apologise to our readership.