Muscle Pathology in Dystrophic Rats and Zebrafish Is Unresponsive to Taurine Treatment, Compared to the Mouse Model for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Inflammation and oxidative stress are strongly implicated in the pathology of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), and the sulphur-containing amino acid taurine ameliorates both and decreases dystropathology in the mouse model for DMD. We therefore further tested taurine as a therapy using dystrophic DMD rats and zebrafish models for DMD that have a more severe dystropathology. However, taurine treatment had little effect on the indices of dystropathology in both these models.

Characterization of brain dystrophins absence and impact in dystrophin-deficient Dmdmdx rat model.

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a severe muscle-wasting disease caused by mutations in the DMD gene encoding dystrophin, expressed mainly in muscles but also in other tissues like retina and brain. Non-progressing cognitive dysfunction occurs in 20 to 50% of DMD patients. Furthermore, loss of expression of the Dp427 dystrophin isoform in the brain of mdx mice, the most used animal model of DMD, leads to behavioral deficits thought to be linked to insufficiencies in synaptogenesis and channel clustering at synapses.

Skeletal muscle relaxant effect of a standardized extract of L. after acute administration in mice.

L. root extracts are traditionally taken for their sedative and anxiolytic properties and are also used for muscle relaxation. Relaxant effects were clearly observed on smooth muscle whereas data on effects on skeletal muscle are scarce and inconsistent.

Immersion pulmonary oedema in a healthy diver not exposed to cold or strenuous exercise.

In healthy divers, the occurrence of immersion pulmonary oedema (IPE) is commonly caused by contributory factors including strenuous exercise, cold water and negative-pressure breathing. Contrary to this established paradigm, this case reports on a 26-year-old, well-trained combat swimmer who succumbed to acute IPE during static immersion in temperate (21°C) water, while using a front-mounted counterlung rebreather. The incident occurred during repeated depth-controlled ascent practice at the French military diving school.

Clozapine counteracts a ketamine-induced depression of hippocampal-prefrontal neuroplasticity and alters signaling pathway phosphorylation.

Single sub-anesthetic doses of ketamine can exacerbate the symptoms of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, yet similar ketamine treatments rapidly reduce depressive symptoms in major depression. Acute doses of the atypical antipsychotic drug clozapine have also been shown to counteract ketamine-induced psychotic effects. In the interest of understanding whether these drug effects could be modeled with alterations in neuroplasticity, we examined the impact of acutely-administered ketamine and clozapine on in vivo long-term potentiation (LTP) in the rat's hippocampus-to-prefrontal cortex (H-PFC) pathway.