STUDY OBJECTIVE Acute renal colic is a common presenting complaint to the emergency department. Recently, medical expulsive therapy using alpha-antagonists or calcium channel blockers has been shown to augment stone passage rates of moderately sized, distal, ureteral stones. Herein is a systematic evaluation of the use of medical expulsive therapy to facilitate ureteral stone expulsion. METHO...

We used a gerbil model of cerebral ischemia to study the effects of ion channel blockers on neuronal death resulting from enhanced glutamate release and calcium ion influx. The common carotid arteries of gerbils were occluded for 5 minutes and injected intraperitoneally immediately after ischemia with an alkylene iminopropylene derivative (glutamate blocker) or a piperazinyl ethanol derivative ...

Calcium channel blockers, beta adrenergic receptor blockers and Na/K ATPase inhibitors are widely used drugs, mainly for cardiovascular diseases. Their pharmacological targets are not restricted to the cardivascular tissue, nociceptive system structures also express similar targets, which strongly suggests a direct effect on pain sensation. To evaluate the pain intensity changes in outpatient g...

Dr. Y. Pirson, Cliniques Universitaires St. Luc, Department of Nephrology, Avenue Hippocrate 10, B-1200 Brussels (Belgium) Dear Sir, Calcium channel blockers are increasingly used in kidney graft recipients not only to lower blood pressure but also to prevent or attenuate ischemia or ciclosporin (CS)-induced graft dysfunction [1–3]. Their usefulness however is limited by a potentially deleterio...

the role of opioid receptor and voltage dependent calcium channels on the kindling induced by the convulsant pentylenetetrazole (ptz) were investigated in the rats. experiment involved 24 rats which were divided into four groups. kindling was established with ptz in subconvulsive dose (37.5 mg/kg i.p.) every 48 h and effects were observed within 20 min using five-point scoring system. all anima...

OBJECTIVES Combination therapy using an angiotensin II receptor blocker is expected to promote medication adherence and alleviate economic burden among patients by reducing the number of drugs taken, and thereby to lower associated medical costs. In the present retrospective study, we conducted a survey on the use of angiotensin II receptor blocker-containing combination tablets as anti-hyperte...

Calcium channel blockers are among the most commonly used therapeutic drugs. Nevertheless, the utility of calcium channel blockers for heart disease is limited because of the potent vasodilatory effect that causes hypotension, and other side effects attributable to blockade of noncardiac channels. Therefore, focal calcium channel blockade by gene transfer is highly desirable. With a view to cre...