[Role of procalcitonin in the diagnosis of early neonatal infection].

Objective: To limit the regulation of antibiotherapy in neonatal early infections by improving the tracking and the diagnosis of infected newborns.

Patients And Method: First part: analysis of procalcitonin (PCT) in the cord. Method of tracking: 87 cases.

Perfusion brain SPECT and statistical parametric mapping analysis indicate that apathy is a cingulate syndrome: a study in Alzheimer's disease and nondemented patients.

Apathy is the most frequent behavioral symptom in Alzheimer's disease and is also frequently reported in other brain organic disorders occurring in the elderly. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that apathy was related to an anterior cingulate hypofunction. Forty-one subjects were studied.

Fibrinogen Alès: a homozygous case of dysfibrinogenemia (gamma-Asp(330)-->Val) characterized by a defective fibrin polymerization site "a".

Congenital homozygous dysfibrinogenemia was diagnosed in a man with a history of 2 thrombotic strokes before age 30. His hemostatic profile was characterized by a dramatically prolonged plasma thrombin clotting time, and no clotting was observed with reptilase. Complete clotting of the abnormal fibrinogen occurred after a prolonged incubation of plasma with thrombin.

Impact of attenuation correction by simultaneous emission/transmission tomography on visual assessment of 201Tl myocardial perfusion images.

Unlabelled: It has been shown in clinical studies that for subjects with a low likelihood of coronary artery disease (CAD), attenuation correction (AC) improves the specificity of defect detection in the inferior wall (right coronary artery [RCA] region). The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of AC on the visual interpretation of the RCA and anteroseptal (corresponding to the left anterior descending artery [LAD]) regions in CAD patients.

Methods: Fifty-six patients with suspected CAD underwent 20Tl stress/4 h-delayed imaging SPECT using a simultaneous 201Tl emission/99mTc transmission imaging protocol.

[Importance of the structure of the clot in thrombolysis].

Activation of plasminogen by tissue-type plasminogen activator (tpA) is potentiated by fibrin. We have demonstrated the role of fibrin polymerization in the potentiating effect of tpA-induced fibrinolysis. Therefore a pathogenic mechanism of thrombotic disorder may be related to an abnormal fibrin polymerization: the abnormal clot being less accessible to fibrinolysis than normal one.

Direct determination of plasma fibrinogen levels by heat precipitation. A comparison of the technique against thrombin clottable fibrinogen with spectrophotometry and radial immuno-diffusion.

We have studied the Thorp method for precipitation of fibrinogen from diluted plasma, using a specific buffer (pH 6.3) at 56 degrees C, and the preferred anticoagulant (EDTA). Nephelometric or turbidimetric measurements of the precipitate were compared with the results obtained by radial immunodiffusion, or by thrombin clotting, of fibrinogen.