Oropharyngeal flora in healthy infants: observations and implications for cystic fibrosis care.

Objective: The purpose of this preliminary study was to determine normal oropharyngeal flora in healthy, non-CF infants in order to help care givers better interpret culture results obtained from infants with CF.

Methods: Oropharyngeal cultures were obtained from 104 healthy infants <12 months old. Cultures were obtained using the same methods as for CF patients and were inoculated onto routine CF culture media.

Economic evaluations of treatments for systemic fungal infections: a systematic review of the literature.

We systematically reviewed published economic evaluations of systemic antifungal therapies and assessed their strengths and weaknesses. The study identified all economic evaluations published before May 2002 and critically appraised their methods using a published checklist. Over 1000 papers on antifungal treatments and costs were retrieved, 40 of which were economic evaluations.

The cost to the United Kingdom National Health Service of managing erectile dysfunction: the impact of sildenafil and prescribing restrictions.

Objective: To estimate the annual direct cost of managing erectile dysfunction (ED) to the UK National Health Service (NHS) and to examine the impact of the introduction of sildenafil in 1998 and Schedule 11 restrictions in 1999.

Design: A prevalence-based cost-of-illness approach was used. The period 1997 to 2000 was covered.

Identification and characterisation of heterogeneous somatostatin binding sites in rat distal colonic mucosa.

We have previously shown that the somatostatin (SRIF) sst2 receptor-selective peptide, BIM-23027, is a potent antisecretory agent in rat isolated distal colonic mucosa (RDCM) and in radioligand binding studies in RDCM membranes, it only maximally inhibited approximately 40% of [125I]-Tyr11-SRIF-14 binding (McKeen ES, Feniuk W, Humphrey PPA (1995) Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Arch Pharmacol 352:402-411). The aim of this study was to characterise the BIM-23027-sensitive and -insensitive SRIF binding sites in more detail and to compare their properties with those of the recombinant sst2 receptor stably expressed in mouse fibroblast (Ltk-) cells. SRIF-14, SRIF-28, CGP-23996 and D Trp8-SRIF-14 abolished [125I]-Tyr11-SRIF-14 binding (pIC50 values, 8.

Somatostatin receptors mediating inhibition of basal and stimulated electrogenic ion transport in rat isolated distal colonic mucosa.

The aim of this study was to examine the potencies of several recently identified selective somatostatin (SRIF)-receptor ligands as inhibitors of electrogenic ion transport in the rat distal colonic mucosa with the view to identifying the SRIF receptor type involved. Under basal conditions, cumulative administration of SRIF and SRIF28 decreased short circuit current (SCC), a measure of electrogenic ion transport, with EC50 values of 4 nM and 9 nM respectively. The peptidase inhibitors, phosphoramidon (1 microM) and amastatin (10 microM), has no effect on the potencies of either SRIF or SRIF28.