AAGA

The literature (2012-4) describing experimental pig surgery was reviewed to estimate the extent to which neuromuscular block (NMB) is used, to examine methods for ensuring unconsciousness, and to identify the rationale for use of NMB and establish the anaesthetist's training. In the first stage of a two-stage review, NMB use was estimated using Web of Knowledge to identify articles describing NMB during pig surgeries. In the second stage, PubMed and Google Scholar were used to increase the number of articles for determining measures taken to prevent accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA)...

Patient awareness during general anesthesia and the later recall of what happened during surgery can be experienced by patients as horrifying events that leave lasting mental trauma in the form of posttraumatic stress syndrome (PTSS). Awareness is related to a temporary insufficient depth of anesthesia. This phenomenon has been discussed for more than 20 years. According to randomized controlled studies, in the absence of risk factors awareness phenomena occur in 1-2 per 1000 operations involving general anesthesia (0...

BACKGROUND: Patient satisfaction is an important metric of health-care quality. Accidental awareness under general anaesthesia (AAGA) is a serious complication of anaesthesia care which may go unrecognised in the immediate perioperative period but leads to long-term psychological harm for affected patients. The SNAP-1 study aimed to measure patient satisfaction with anaesthesia care and the incidence of AAGA, reported on direct questioning within 24 h of surgery, in a large multicentre cohort...

We present the main findings of the 5th National Audit Project (NAP5) on accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA). Incidences were estimated using reports of accidental awareness as the numerator, and a parallel national anaesthetic activity survey to provide denominator data. The incidence of certain/probable and possible accidental awareness cases was ~1:19,600 anaesthetics (95% confidence interval 1:16,700-23,450). However, there was considerable variation across subtypes of techniques or subspecialities...

The 5th National Audit Project (NAP5) of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland into accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA) yielded data related to psychological aspects from the patient, and the anaesthetist, perspectives; patients' experiences ranged from isolated auditory or tactile sensations to complete awareness. A striking finding was that 75% of experiences were for <5 min, yet 51% of patients [95% confidence interval (CI) 43-60%] experienced distress and 41% (95% CI 33-50%) suffered longer term adverse effect...

BACKGROUND: Accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA) with recall is a potentially distressing complication of general anaesthesia that can lead to psychological harm. The 5th National Audit Project (NAP5) was designed to investigate the reported incidence, predisposing factors, causality, and impact of accidental awareness. METHODS: A nationwide network of local co-ordinators across all the UK and Irish public hospitals reported all new patient reports of accidental awareness to a central database, using a system of monthly anonymized reporting over a calendar year...

Vitamin D deficiency has been recognized as a major public health issue worldwide. Recent studies have indicated that genetic factors might play an important role in determining serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels in Caucasians and African Americans. However, the genes that contribute to the variation in serum 25(OH)D levels in Chinese are unknown. In this study, we screened 15 key genes within the vitamin D metabolic pathway using 96 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in a group of 2897 unrelated healthy Chinese subjects...

INTRODUCTION: Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a severe, chronic inflammatory disease strongly associated with HLA-B27. The presence of additional HLA risk factors has been suggested by several studies. The aim of the current study is to assess the occurrence of an additional HLA susceptibility locus in the region between HLA-E and HLA-C in the Sardinian population. METHODS: 200 random controls, 120 patients with AS and 175 HLA-B27 positive controls were genotyped for six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) spanning the HLA region between HLA-E and HLA-C loci previously shown to harbour an additional susceptibility locus for AS...

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) play critical roles in osteoblast differentiation. To investigate the association between common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of BMPs and bone mineral density (BMD), a cross-sectional study was conducted in healthy Korean men (n = 237) and women (n = 276) aged 20-39 years. Calcaneus and distal radius BMD were measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry. SNPs of BMP2 (-1103C > A, c.584G > A, IVS1-2744A > G, c.893T > A), BMP4 (c.712T > C, IVS1-160C > T), and BMP6 (c...

To investigate the presence of diarrheagenic Escherichia coli in Lambaréné, Gabon, 150 children with diarrhea were screened for enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC), enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC), enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC), enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), and enteroinvasive E. coli (EIEC) using polymerase chain reaction and an HEp-2 cell culture techniques. Isolates of EAEC were detected in 57 children, two thirds of them between six months and two years of age, and isolates of ETEC were detected in seven patients...

Gracilaria species are an important source of agar. The South African Gracilaria industry has experienced a number of setbacks over the last decade in the form of complete or partial die-offs of the agarophyte growing in Saldanha Bay, which may be attributed to bacterial infection. Since a positive correlation was observed between the presence of agarolytic epiphytes and bacterial pathogenicity, we investigated the role of an agarase in the virulence mechanism employed by a bacterium that elicits disease in Gracilaria gracilis...

Eukaryotic initiation factor 2- (eIF2-) associated glycoprotein p67 blocks eIF2alpha phosphorylation by kinases, and its N-terminal 1-97 amino acid segment can induce efficient translation. To investigate whether glycosylation at the serine/threonine clusters at this region is important in protein synthesis, we selected (27)TSST(30) and (60)SGTS(63) clusters for further analysis. By site-directed mutagenesis, (27)TSST(30) and (60)SGTS(63) clusters were substituted with (27)AAGA(30) and (60)AGAA(63) amino acid residues in full-length p67, and their EGFP fusions were constitutively expressed in rat tumor hepatoma cells (KRC-7)...

The Clostridium perfringens gene encoding the previously characterized alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase (alphaNAG) was identified by protein microsequencing and database searching. The alphaNAG protein, designated AagA, was found to be encoded by a hypothetical gene of unknown function in the recently completed genome sequence of C. perfringens strain 13. The deduced translation product of 629 amino acid residues possessed a region of limited homology to several hypothetical open reading frames, an enterotoxin of unknown function and several known or predicted alpha-galactosidases, but did not exhibit homology to any of the multiple sequenced eukaryotic alphaNAG proteins...

A generic hexadeoxyribonucleotide microchip has been applied to test the DNA-binding properties of HU histone-like bacterial protein, which is known to have a low sequence specificity. All 4096 hexamers flanked within 8mers by degenerate bases at both the 3'- and 5'-ends were immobilized within the 100 x 100 x 20 mm polyacrylamide gel pads of the microchip. Single-stranded immobilized oligonucleotides were converted in some experiments to the double-stranded form by hybridization with a specified mixture of 8mers...

PURPOSE: To clone and characterize the canine RPE65 cDNA from normal dog, examine for mutations, and establish if the mutation identified in Swedish briard dogs with retinal dystrophy is present in dogs of the same breed that originated from the United States and other countries, and are affected with congenital stationary night blindness. METHODS: Fifteen briard dogs were studied, of which 10 were affected with csnb, and five were clinically normal. In addition, we tested samples from four Swedish dogs, and samples from a briard affected with progressive retinal atrophy...

The interaction of human DNA topoisomerase I (topo I) with specific sequence oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) of different length and structure has been investigated. All the ODNs used were shown to be effective enzyme inhibitors and to inhibit the topo I catalyzed relaxation of scDNA in a competitive manner. Among two DNA regions (A and B) required for topo I-mediated DNA cleavage, the former was found to display the higher affinity for the enzyme. The enzyme's affinity for ODNs corresponding to the scissile strand (five and nine nucleotide units in length) is about 2-4 orders of magnitude higher than that for non-specific ODNs of the same length...

Recently mouse DNA topoisomerase I (topo) was shown to possess high affinity for a single-stranded AAGACTTAG nonanucleotide (K(i) = 2.0 microM) corresponding to the scissile strand of the minimal DNA duplex, which is necessary for cleavage of supercoiled DNA. In order to determine the most important part of the above sequence for the DNA recognition by topo, the interactions of the enzyme with a set of extremely short (2-5 nucleotides in length) oligonucleotides corresponding to different parts of the nonanucleotide have been investigated...

Expression of the Evi-1 gene is activated in murine myeloid leukemias by retroviral insertions and in human acute myelogenous leukemia by translocations and inversions involving chromosome band 3q26 where the gene resides. Aberrant expression of the Evi-1 gene has been shown to interfere with myeloid differentiation, which is proposed to be the basis for its role in leukemias. The Evi-1 gene encodes a 145-kDa DNA-binding protein containing two domains of seven and three Cys2-His2 zinc fingers. Previous studies identified a portion of the consensus DNA-binding sequence for the first domain of zinc fingers...

ermSF (synonym tlrA) from Streptomyces fradiae NRRL 2702 confers resistance to the macrolide-lincosamide- streptogramin type B (MLS) superfamily of antibiotics. ErmSF specifically methylates Bacillus subtilis 23S rRNA in vitro at A2085 (B. subtilis coordinate, which is equivalent to the Escherichia coli coordinate A2058). In the present studies, partial B. subtilis 23S rRNA sequences containing portions of the peptidyltransferase circle which include A2085 were constructed in order to identify structural requirements needed for RNA to function as substrate of ErmSF...

The specificity and sensibility of IgA and IgG alfagliadin antibody test (AaGA) for screening, diagnosis and follow-up of childhood coeliac disease has been evaluated. We have compared AaGA test to D-xylose blood test and at last we have examined the false positive and negative results given by the test. Two groups of subjects were considered: 1) 90 children with untreated coeliac disease (21 newly diagnosed (I stage), 50 in gluten withdrawal (II stage), 19 in challenge (III stage); 2) 255 disease controls including: 157 healthy controls; 31 children with gastroenterological disorders other than coeliac disease; 31 children with food allergy and atopic dermatitis; 36 children with "constitutional" short stature (without GH deficiency and with normal intestinal mucosa)...