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PURPOSE: To determine risk factors for each severity-based category of potential drug-drug interactions (DDIs) encountered at intensive care unit (ICU) patients. METHODS: This was a retrospective cohort analysis of patients treated at the ICU of the Clinical Center Kragujevac, a public tertiary care hospital in Kragujevac, Serbia. Three interaction checkers were used to reveal drug-drug interactions: Medscape, Epocrates and Micromedex. RESULTS: The study included 201 patients, 66...

Veterinary drugs containing synthetic anabolic steroid and nitroimidazole active agents are not allowed for their applications in livestock of the European Union (EU). This paper presents analyses of twelve selected steroids and six nitroimidazole antibiotics at low levels (1.56μg/L-4.95μg/L and 0.17μg/kg-2.14μg/kg, respectively) in body fluids and egg incurred samples. Analyses involved clean-up procedures, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation, and tandem mass spectrometric screening and confirmatory methods...

This work treats writing inks, particularly ballpoint pen inks. It reviews those ink aging methods that are based on the analysis (measurement) of ink solvents (e.g., 2-phenoxyethanol, which is the most common among ballpoint pen inks). Each method involves measurements that are components of an ink aging parameter associated with the method. Only mass independent parameters are considered. An ink solvent from an ink that is on an air-exposed substrate will evaporate at a decreasing rate and is never constant as the ink ages...

PURPOSE: Endothelial glycocalyx (EG) shedding may promote organ failure in sepsis. This study describes temporal changes in EG biomarkers from Emergency Department (ED) arrival, and associations with clinical characteristics. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This prospective observational study included 23 patients with simple infection, 86 with sepsis and 29 healthy controls. Serum EG biomarkers included syndecan-1, syndecan-4 and hyaluronan. Samples were taken on enrolment in the ED (T0), 1 hour (T1), 3 hours (T3) and 12 to 24 hours (T24) later...

Anthropogenic increase of nitrogen (N) deposition has threatened forest ecosystem health at both regional and global scales. In N-limited ecosystems, atmospheric N input is regarded as an important nutrient source for plant growth. However, it remains an open question on how elevated N deposition affects plant growth in N-rich forest ecosystems. To address this question, we used a simulated N deposition experiment in an N-rich mature tropical forest of southern China, with N addition levels as 0kgNha(-1)yr(-1) (Control), 50kgNha(-1)yr(-1) (Low-N), 100kgNha(-1)yr(-1) (Middle-N) and 150kgNha(-1)yr(-1) (High-N), respectively...

Understanding sorption and desorption processes is essential to predicting the mobility of radionuclides in the environment. We investigate adsorption/desorption of cesium in both binary (Cs+one mineral) and ternary (Cs+two minerals) experiments to study component additivity and sorption reversibility over long time periods (500days). Binary Cs sorption experiments were performed with illite, montmorillonite, and kaolinite in a 5mM NaCl/0.7mM NaHCO3 solution (pH8) and Cs concentration range of 10(-3) to 10(-11)M...

In recent years, behavior-related endpoints have been proposed as rapid and reliable ecotoxicological tools for risk assessment. In particular, the use of detritivores to test the toxicity of pollutants through feeding is currently becoming a well-known method. Experiments combining feeding with other behavioral endpoints can provide relevant information about direct and indirect toxicological effects of chemicals. We carried out a feeding experiment with the shredder Gammarus pulex in order to detect indirect (through leaf conditioning) and direct effects (through water exposure) of two pollutants at environmentally relevant concentrations: the fungicide prochloraz (6 μg/L) and the antidepressant fluoxetine (100 ng/L)...

Gait retraining is a common form of treatment for running related injuries. Proximal factors at the hip have been postulated as having a role in the development of running related injuries. How altering footstrike affects hip muscles forces and kinematics has not been described. Thus, we aimed to quantify differences in hip muscle forces and hip kinematics that may occur when healthy runners are instructed to alter their foot strike pattern from their habitual rear-foot strike to a forefoot strike. This may gain insight on the potential etiology and treatment methods of running related lower extremity injury...

BACKGROUND: Few studies in North America have quantified the risks of second malignant neoplasms (SMNs) among survivors of childhood non-central nervous system (non-CNS) embryonal tumours due to their rarity. We aimed to investigate these risks by combining population-based data from the United States of America and Canada. METHODS: We evaluated patients with childhood non-CNS embryonal tumours reported to the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results program and eight Canadian cancer registries from 1969 to 2010...

INTRODUCTION: Prostate and breast cancer screening in older patients continue to be controversial. Balancing the desire for early detection with avoidance of over-diagnosis has led to competing and contradictory guidelines for both practices. Despite similarities, it is not known how these screening practices are related at the regional level. In this study, we examined how screening PSA and mammography are related within healthcare regions, and, to better understand what may be driving these practices, whether they are associated with local intensity of care...

BACKGROUND: Young adulthood is a developmental period frequently associated with occurrence of impulsive behaviors including gambling. It is estimated that 73% of children and 87% of adults in the United States regularly use caffeine. Questions remain, however, concerning the role of caffeine in the development and maintenance of impulsive behaviors such as gambling. METHODS: Sixty-one young adults with at least some degree of disordered gambling were recruited from two Mid-Western university communities in the United States using media advertisements...

Three previously undescribed compounds, maneonenes and isomaneonene derivatives; in addition to five known compounds, two cuparene, one chamigrene, and two cis-maneonenes were isolated from the Red Sea red alga Laurencia obtusa. The chemical structures of all unknown metabolites were characterized employing spectroscopic methods and then were further confirmed by single crystal X-ray analysis. Jeddahenyne A has C-5-C-12 etheric linkage and C-13-C-14 carbon-carbon double bond; Jeddahenyne B has in addition to the aforementioned etheric linkage a C-13 carbonyl function and absence of halogenation, unusual features for the maneonenes while 12-debromo-12-methoxy isomaneonene A shows unrecorded methoxylation at C-12...

Todos os Santos Bay (BTS) is the 2nd largest bay in Brazil and an important resource for the people of the State of Bahia. We made measurements of radon and radium in selected areas of the bay to evaluate if these tracers could provide estimates of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) and flushing times of the Paraguaçu Estuary and BTS. We found that there were a few areas along the eastern and northeastern shorelines that displayed relatively high radon and low salinities, indicating possible sites of enhanced SGD...

The molecular basis of many health outcomes attributed to solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) is unknown. We tested the hypothesis that they may originate from transcriptional changes in blood cells. This was determined by assessing the effect of fluorescent solar simulated radiation (FSSR) on the transcriptional profile of peripheral blood pre- and 6h, 24h and 48h post-exposure in nine healthy volunteers. Expression of 20 genes was down-regulated and one was up-regulated at 6h after FSSR. All recovered to baseline expression at 24h or 48h...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of third or later antiepileptic drug (AED) regimens in adult patients with epilepsy according to epilepsy syndrome. METHODS: The time courses of AEDs and their efficacy were evaluated in 449 adults with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE, n=153), juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME, n=33), or extratemporal focal epilepsy (FE, n=263) based mainly on clinical symptoms and EEG findings. Any change in AEDs after their initiation demarcated the end of one regimen, whereas changes in dose did not...

BACKGROUND: While it is well documented that many experience harm from others' substance use, little is known about the psychological strain associated with others' use. The aims were: (1) to describe the prevalence of worries about others' alcohol, cigarette and illegal drug use, (2) whose substance use people worry about, (3) the overlap in worries, and (4) to examine how worries about others' use of each substance vary according to demographics, own substance use and experience of harm from others' use...

BACKGROUND: Risk assessments are needed to identify adults with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) at high risk of choking and pneumonia. AIM: To describe the development and validation of the Choking Risk Assessment (CRA) and the Pneumonia Risk Assessment (PRA) for adults with IDD. METHODS: Test items were identified through literature review and focus groups. Five-year retrospective chart reviews identified a positive choking group (PCG), a negative choking group (NCG), a positive pneumonia group (PPG), and a negative pneumonia group (NPG)...

An experiment was conducted to investigate the spatial memory and transformation of spatial relations in a sample of 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and to compare their performance with that of adults. Four pictures of animals were presented at different locations on the outline of a circle. Participants were instructed to memorize the array of locations and then, in a direct retrieval task, to reconstruct it from memory on a piece of paper that included only the circle outline. Then, in the transformation task, participants were asked to randomly place one of the animals at a new position around the circle and then to place the remaining three animals so that object-to-object locations were preserved...

Hexagonal mesoporous MgAl layered double hydroxide (LDH) was synthesized through a simple hydrothermal method and was employed without calcination as adsorbent in the removal of the direct anionic azo dye, Brilliant Yellow (BY). The adsorbent was characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM and BET surface area. Hexagonal platelets of MgAl LDH were fabricated with nanometric building blocks. Batch experiments were carried out for study effects of contact time, amount of adsorbent, solution pH and solution temperature on the removal efficiency of BY...

Assemblies of metal nanoparticles (NPs) have been broadly used for the construction of materials with distinct spectroscopic properties towards sensing applications. On the other hand, well-dispersed NPs are exploit for applications in catalysis and medicine. Biopolymers or biomimetic oligomers can serve both as efficient stabilizers of NPs and as useful aggregation mediators that can lead to assemblies with unique properties. Controlling aggregation processes, however, is still challenging and often relies on trial and error rather than on defined thumb rules...