BACKGROUND A serum ceruloplasmin concentration below 0.20 g/L is conventionally considered as one of the major diagnostic criteria for Wilson disease. This decision threshold has not been fully validated for its diagnostic characteristics, however. In this study, we evaluated various decision thresholds of serum ceruloplasmin concentration in the diagnosis of Wilson disease based on genotype-ve...

A freshwater "mussel mortality threshold" was explored as a function of porewater ammonium (NH4+) concentration, mussel biomass, and total nitrogen (N) utilizing a numerical model calibrated with data from mesocosms with and without mussels. A mortality threshold of 2 mg-N L-1 porewater NH4+ was selected based on a study that estimated 100% mortality of juvenile Lampsilis mussels exposed to 1.9...

We examined whether airway cough receptor sensitivity correlates to nonspecific bronchial responsiveness. We measured cough threshold, the lowest concentration of inhaled tartaric acid eliciting five or more coughs, and the provocative concentration of methacholine producing a 20% fall in forced expiratory volume in one second (PC20FEV1) in 38 normal and 11 asthmatic subjects. All subjects were...

Laser-assisted killing of gold nanoparticle targeted macrophages was investigated. Using pressure transient detection, flash photography and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging, we studied the mechanism of single cell damage by vapor bubble formation around gold nanospheres induced by nanosecond laser pulses. The influence of the number of irradiating laser pulses and of particle siz...

We studied 57 patients admitted to hospital with ischaemic heart disease, including nine patients with variant angina, to evaluate platelet reactivity and its dependence on alpha-adrenergic receptor function. The threshold concentration for biphasic platelet aggregation in response to adrenaline and adenosine diphosphate was measured in fresh platelet rich plasma. There were age related alterat...

BACKGROUND Salbutamol abuse detection by athletes is based on a urinary upper threshold defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). However, this threshold was determined in healthy, untrained individuals and after a dose of salbutamol inhaled that might not really mirror the condition of asthmatic athletes and the experts's guidelines for asthma management. We aimed to revise this threshol...

Two methods of interpreting histamine inhalation dose-response curves were compared in 27 normal and 41 asthmatic subjects. The histamine provocation concentration producing a 20% fall (PC20) in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) was calculated on the basis of the lowest FEV1 after inhalation of saline and the lowest value after inhalation of histamine. The histamine threshold was de...