Travelers' thrombosis--a state of practice in Germany.

Background: Evidence-based guidelines to prevent travelers' thrombosis (TT) are still missing. We wanted to know whether travelers perceive the risk of TT, how they and their physicians cope with this in daily life, and whether recommended thrombosis prophylaxis (TP) was actually performed.

Methods: A standardized questionnaire (Q1) asking for age, gender, travel habits, and the assessment of the risk of TT was given to randomly incoming travelers seeking for travel medicine advice prior to long haul travel.

Degraded collagenase deteriorates islet viability.

Objective: The utilization of purified enzyme blends consisting of collagenase class I (CI) and II (CII) and neutral protease is an essential step for clinical islet isolation. Previous studies suggested that the use of enzyme lots containing degraded CI reduced islet release from human pancreata. The present study sought to assess the effect of degraded collagenase on islet function in vitro and posttransplantation.

The ratio between collagenase class I and class II influences the efficient islet release from the rat pancreas.

Background: Previous studies indicated different roles of collagenase class I, class II and neutral protease in the enzymatic islet release from pancreatic tissue. Because no information has been available, this study was aimed to investigate the isolation efficiency of different ratios between collagenase class II and I (C-ratio) in the rat pancreas serving as model for the human pancreas without being restricted by the large variability observed in human donors.

Methods: Rat pancreata were digested using a marginal neutral protease activity and 20 PZ-U of purified collagenase classes recombined to create a C-ratio of 0.