Objective: Addition of the drugs to lidocaine to induce epidural analgesia in order to elongate and enhance the analgesia has been investigated previously. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of epidurally administered xylazine either in combination of lidocaine or alone in rabbits. Design: Experimental study Animals: Twelve healthy and adult male New Zealand white strain rab...

BACKGROUND Thoracic epidural analgesia with bupivacaine resulted in clinically relevant postvoid residuals due to detrusor underactivity. This study aimed to compare the risk of bladder dysfunction with ropivacaine versus bupivacaine using postvoid residuals and maximum flow rates. Our hypothesis was that ropivacaine would result in lower postvoid residuals, because ropivacaine has been shown t...

background: accidental dural puncture during epidural blockade is a rare complication. since postdural puncture headache (pdph) is the most frequent complication, a wisely management method will also reduce the incidence of pdph. methods: five patients who had inadvertent dural puncture during the epidural procedure before hip or knee arthroplasty were included in this study. after dural punctu...

The mechanisms of action of antitumor necrosis factor α (anti-TNF-α) antibodies in the therapy of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are not completely understood. Binding of antibodies to transmembrane TNF-α seems to be crucial for the induction of several cellular responses, including complement-dependent cytotoxicity, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity, and reverse signaling. However, th...

Monocyte/macrophage recruitment correlates strongly with the progression of diabetic nephropathy. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) is produced by monocytes/macrophages but the direct role of TNF-α and/or macrophage-derived TNF-α in the progression of diabetic nephropathy remains unclear. Here we tested whether inhibition of TNF-α confers kidney protection in diabetic nephropathy via a macrophage...

A 63 years old patient with severely impaired pulmonary function presented with bilateral lower limb vascular blockade and was operated for emergency aortobifemoral bypass. The patient was considered to be at very high risk for general anesthesia but doing the case under regional anesthesia was also challenging because of the multiple dermatomal levels needed to be anesthetized and because of t...

Obesity is a known risk factor for allergic asthma. It has been recognized as a key player in the pathogenesis of several inflammatory disorders via activation of macrophages, which is also vital to the development of allergic asthma. We investigated the mechanism of obesity-related asthma and whether treating obesity through exercise or diet ameliorates the severity of asthma in the obesity-re...

The activity of the serine protease in the German cockroach allergen is important to the development of allergic disease. The protease-activated receptor (PAR)-2, which is expressed in numerous cell types in lung tissue, is known to mediate the cellular events caused by inhaled serine protease. Alveolar macrophages express PAR-2 and produce considerable amounts of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α....

Inflammation and lymphangiogenesis are two cohesively coupled processes that promote tumour growth and invasion. Here we report that TNF-α markedly promotes tumour lymphangiogenesis and lymphatic metastasis. The TNF-α-TNFR1 signalling pathway directly stimulates lymphatic endothelial cell activity through a VEGFR3-independent mechanism. However, VEGFR3-induced lymphatic endothelial cell tips ar...