Single Coronary Artery Anomaly: A Case Report and Review of Literature.

Introduction: Single coronary artery is a rare anomaly, which is usually associated with other cardiac congenital abnormalities.

Case Report: A 56-year-old female presented with unstable angina. The patient reported complaints of typical chest pain on exertion few months prior to presentation, which progressed to become at rest.

An integrated portable hand-held analyser for real-time isothermal nucleic acid amplification.

A compact hand-held heated fluorometric instrument for performing real-time isothermal nucleic acid amplification and detection is described. The optoelectronic instrument combines a Printed Circuit Board/Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (PCB/MEMS) reaction detection/chamber containing an integrated resistive heater with attached miniature LED light source and photo-detector and a disposable glass waveguide capillary to enable a mini-fluorometer. The fluorometer is fabricated and assembled in planar geometry, rolled into a tubular format and packaged with custom control electronics to form the hand-held reactor.

Iowa medicare beneficiaries' satisfaction and experiences with a prescription drug discount card and preferred drug list.

Objective: To evaluate the expectations, experiences, and satisfaction with the Iowa Priority Prescription Savings (IPPS) program.

Design: Longitudinal descriptive study.

Setting: Iowa.

Simplified enrichment and identification of environmental peptide toxins using antibody-capture surfaces with subsequent mass spectrometry detection.

The development of a simplified assay for detection of congeners of the microcystin (MC) hepatotoxin is described that combines the extreme sensitivity of surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight MS (SELDI TOF-MS) with the superior selectivity of immunoaffinity interactions. Using methods similar to those of conventional immunoassays, MC standards were captured and enriched on immunoreactive ProteinChips coated with an MC-antibody and analyzed by TOF-MS. Unlike with conventional immunoassays, individual congeners were resolved from mixed pools.

Spectrometric determination of the refractive index of optical wave guiding materials used in lab-on-a-chip applications.

The design and optimization of light-based analytical devices often require optical characterization of materials involved in their construction. With the aim of benefiting lab-on-a-chip applications, a transmission spectrometric method for determining refractive indices, n, of transparent solids is presented here. Angular dependence of the reflection coefficient between material-air interfaces constitutes the basis of the procedure.

Negatively charged sol-gel column with stable electroosmotic flow for online preconcentration of zwitterionic biomolecules in capillary electromigration separations.

A negatively charged sol-gel coating was developed for on-line preconcentration of zwitterionic biomolecules in capillary electrophoresis (CE), using asparagine and myoglobin as representative zwitterionic bioanalytes. The sol-gel coating was created by using a solution containing three precursors: mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTMS), tetramethoxysilane (TMOS), and n-octadecyltriethoxysilane (C18-TEOS). The resulting sol-gel coating contained chemically bonded mercaptopropyl functional groups that were further oxidized by hydrogen peroxide to the corresponding sulfonic acid moieties.

Population-based medication reviews: a descriptive analysis of the medication issues identified in a medicare not-for-profit prescription discount program.

Background: Medication reviews may be an important strategy to improve medication use, especially for individuals receiving many drugs.

Objective: To describe the types of medication issues and recommendations identified in the Iowa Priority Brown Bag Medication Reviews, compare individuals with medication issues with those without medication issues, and describe Iowa Priority enrollees' experiences with and satisfaction of the review.

Methods: A retrospective review of enrollment forms and medication review records and a survey of Iowa Priority members were conducted in 2002.

High pH-resistant, surface-bonded sol-gel titania hybrid organic-inorganic coating for effective on-line hyphenation of capillary microextraction (in-tube solid-phase microextraction) with high-performance liquid chromatography.

Sol-gel titania-poly(dimethylsiloxane) (TiO2-PDMS) coating was developed for capillary microextraction (CME) to perform on-line preconcentration and HPLC analysis of trace impurities in aqueous samples. A method is presented describing in situ preparation of the titania-based sol-gel PDMS coating and its immobilization on the inner surface of a fused silica microextraction capillary. To perform CME-HPLC, the sol-gel TiO2-PDMS capillary was installed in the HPLC injection port as an external sampling loop, and a conventional ODS column was used for the liquid chromatographic separation.

Sol-gel stationary phases for capillary electrochromatography.

A review is presented on the current state of the art and future trends in the development of sol-gel stationary phases for capillary electrochromatography (CEC). The design and synthesis of stationary phases with prescribed chromatographic and surface charge properties represent challenging tasks in contemporary CEC research. Further developments in CEC as a high-efficiency liquid-phase separation technique will greatly depend on new breakthroughs in the area of stationary phase development.

Positively charged sol-gel coatings for on-line preconcentration of amino acids in capillary electrophoresis.

A novel on-line method is presented for the extraction and preconcentration of amino acids using a sol-gel-coated column coupled to a conventional UV/visible detector. The presented approach does not require any additional modification of the commercially available standard CE instrument. Extraction, stacking, and focusing techniques were used in the preconcentration procedures.

Differentiation of PC12 cells induced by N8-acetylspermidine and by N8-acetylspermidine deacetylase inhibition.

Spermidine is one of the simple polyamines found in cells of virtually all living organisms. It undergoes a metabolic conversion to N8-acetylspermidine catalyzed by an enzyme in cell nuclei and is converted back to spermidine by a deacetylase in the cytoplasm. In this study, two different mechanisms were used to produce an elevation in the level of N8-acetylspermidine in PC12 cells: inhibition of N8-acetylspermidine deacetylase and direct addition of N8-acetylspermidine to the cell culture.