Plant poisoning occurs less commonly in dogs and cats than in herbivorous livestock, but numerous cases have been documented worldwide, most of them caused by common and internationally widely cultivated ornamental garden and house plants. Few cases of poisoning of cats and dogs have been reported in southern Africa, but many of the plants that have caused poisoning in these species elsewhere a...

An optical character recognition (OCR) system enables a user to feed an article directly into an electronic computer file and translate the optically scanned bitmaps of text characters into machine-readable codes; that is, ASCII, Chinese GB, as well as Big5 codes, and then edits it by using a word processor. OCR is hence being employed by libraries to digitize and preserve their holdings. Billi...

This study compared 51 adolescents from intact two-mother planned lesbian families (all conceived through donor insemination) with 51 adolescents from intact mother– father families on their relationships with their parents (parental control, disclosure to parents, and adolescent– parent relationship quality), psychological adjustment (selfesteem, social anxiety, and conduct problems), and subs...

The aim of this multicenter, cross sectional study was to assess the prevalence, incidence and associated risk factors among incarcerated populations from twelve Brazilian prisons. The total of 3,368 individuals from twelve prisons was randomly recruited between March 2013 and March 2014. Participants were interviewed, and provided blood samples which were tested for antibodies to Hepatitis C (...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In France, cannabis consumption is illegal. The health impact of its increasing use and higher tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) concentrations is still poorly documented, particularly that of unintentional pediatric intoxications. We sought to evaluate the French national trend of admissions for unintentional cannabis intoxication in children over an 11-year period (2004-201...

BACKGROUND Cannabinoid, particularly hashish and WIN 55212-2 (WIN), consumption during embryonic period may affect fetal growth, and the development of motor functioning, memory and cognitive functions. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the effects of WIN 55212-2 during embryonic period on behavioral responses, as well as tissue and memory changes among neonatal rats. METHODS WIN...

In 2010 a review by Hazekamp and Grotenhermen covered controlled clinical trials of the years 2006-2009 on cannabis-based medicines, which followed the example of the review by Ben Amar (2006). The current review reports on the more recent clinical data available from 20102014. A systematic search was performed in the scientific database of PubMed, focused on clinical studies that were randomiz...

Cannabinoids, the primary active agent in drugs of abuse such as marijuana and hashish, tend to generate a distorted sense of time. Here we study the effect of cannabinoids on the brain's circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), using patch clamp and cell-attached electrophysiological recordings, RT-PCR, immunocytochemistry, and behavioral analysis. The SCN showed strong expression o...

Endocannabinoids are a new class of lipids, which include amides, esters and ethers of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. Anandamide (N-arachidonoylethanolamine; AEA) and 2-arachidonoylglycerol are the main endogenous agonists of cannabinoid receptors able to mimic several pharmacological effects of Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol, the active principle of Cannabis sativa preparations like ha...

The endocannabinoid system, including endogenous ligands ('endocannabinoids' ECs), their receptors, synthesizing and degrading enzymes, as well as transporter molecules, has been detected from the earliest stages of embryonic development and throughout pre- and postnatal development. ECs are bioactive lipids, which comprise amides, esters and ethers of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. An...