High-flow oxygen therapy v. standard care in infants with viral bronchiolitis.

Background: High-flow humidified oxygen (HFHO) therapy has demonstrated benefit in infants with bronchiolitis.

Objectives: To investigate the efficacy of HFHO in infants with moderate to severe viral bronchiolitis, when used outside the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU), in a hospital with limited PICU resources.

Methods: A randomised controlled trial, which enrolled 28 infants between 1 month and 2 years of age, with a clinical diagnosis of acute viral bronchiolitis and moderate to severe respiratory distress.

Minding the gap-Providing quality transplant care for South African children with acute liver failure.

Pediatric ALF is rare but life-threatening and may require urgent transplantation. In low and middle-income countries, access to transplantation is limited, deceased organ donation rates are low, and data on outcomes scarce. The Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre, in Johannesburg, is one of only two centers in South Africa that perform pediatric liver transplant.

Intrapartum asphyxia and hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy in a public hospital: Incidence and predictors of poor outcome.

Objective: To determine the incidence of asphyxia and hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) and predictors of poor outcome in a hospital in a developing country.

Methods: Neonates of birth weight ≥ 2,000 g who required bag-and-mask ventilation and were admitted with a primary diagnosis of asphyxia from January to December 2011 were included. Medical records were retrieved and maternal and infant data collected and analysed.

Insights into the mechanisms of sister chromatid exchange formation.

The DNA lesions responsible for the formation of sister chromatid exchanges (SCEs) have been the object of research for a long time. SCEs can be visualized by growing cells for either two rounds of replication in the presence of 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) or for one round with BrdU and the next without. If BrdU is added after cells were treated with a DNA-damaging agent, the effect on SCEs can only be analyzed in the second post-treatment mitosis.

X-irradiation of G1 CHO cells induces SCE which are both true and false in BrdU-substituted cells but only false in biotin-dUTP-substituted cells.

The SCE-test is widely used in genetic toxicology and therefore knowledge of the contribution of BrdU to the formation of spontaneous and induced SCE is of great importance. The present study was undertaken to analyse the role of BrdU in X-ray-induced SCE. If SCE resulted from inversions, rings and double minutes (RDM) would be the asymmetrical counterparts of SCE and should therefore have the same frequencies.