The effects of two neurotoxins, veratridine and alpha-scorpion toxin II, on the resting potential (RMP) of identified astrocytes in primary cell culture were studied using standard electophysiological techniques. Veratridine caused either a series of transient depolarizations or a single sustained depolarization. alpha-Scorpion toxin (II), which alone had no effect on the RMP, increased the dur...

An inward rectifier potassium current, Kir, has been identified in cerebral and coronary resistance vessels, where it is considered to be an important determinant of resting membrane potential (RMP) and to play a role in blood flow regulation. We investigated the functional role of Kir in the renal afferent arteriole using the in vitro-perfused hydronephrotic rat kidney. Increasing external KCl...

OBJECTIVE To investigate rapid detection of drug-resistant tuberculosis using the genotypic Inno-LiPA Rif TB assay and a novel, low-cost, bacteriophage-based susceptibility assay. DESIGN The performance of the microwell phage replication assay (MPRA) on 18 isolates from suspected multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patients was compared to the LiPA assay performed directly on sputum specimens. M...

BACKGROUND Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is a major threat to the control of tuberculosis and to public health. Whereas most conventional methods of drug susceptibility testing (DST) are precise but time consuming, pyrosequencing is a rapid, high-throughput technique. OBJECTIVE To conduct a meta-analysis to evaluate the overall accuracy of pyrosequencing for the detection of rifampicin (RM...

SETTING Multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) can jeopardise the success of national TB control programmes. Rapid, simple drug susceptibility tests applicable in developing countries would allow earlier treatment of patients with MDR infections. OBJECTIVE To test the feasibility and performance of the resazurin microtitre assay (REMA) as an indirect test for detecting isoniazid (INH) an...

The 2008 RMP Status and Trends program (RMP S&T) will be collecting benthos, sediment toxicity and chemistry at 27 stations this summer in order to implement and evaluate the Sediment Quality Objectives (SQOs) assessment methods for bays and estuaries that have been approved by the State of California. The RMP S&T conducts both acute and sub-lethal sediment toxicity tests as recommended by the ...

Rifampin increased nitric oxide production and inducible nitric oxide synthase expression in alveolar cells stimulated with cytokines. Nitric oxide concentrations after induction with cytokines, cytokines with 10 microg/ml rifampin, and cytokines with 50 microg/ml rifampin were 3.2, 4.5, and 8.8 microM, respectively (P < 0.02 versus cytokines alone). This indicates that rifampin modulates the i...

In this paper, we propose an algorithm base on decomposition technique for solvingthe mixed integer linear multiplicative-linear bilevel problems. In actuality, this al-gorithm is an application of the algorithm given by G. K. Saharidis et al for casethat the rst level objective function is linear multiplicative. We use properties ofquasi-concave of bilevel programming problems and decompose th...

Recent data point to the contribution of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) to digoxin elimination. On the basis of clinical observations of patients in whom digoxin levels decreased considerably when treated with rifampin, we hypothesized that concomitant rifampin therapy may affect digoxin disposition in humans by induction of P-gp. We compared single-dose (1 mg oral and 1 mg intravenous) pharmacokinetics...

Most Mycobacterium tuberculosis rifampin-resistant strains have been associated with mutations in an 81-bp rifampin resistance-determining region (RRDR) in the gene rpoB. However, if this region alone were targeted, rifampin-resistant strains with mutations outside the RRDR would not be detected. In this study, among 51 rifampin-resistant clinical isolates analyzed by sequencing 1,681-bp-long D...