Effectiveness of confidential unit exclusion in screening blood donors of the regional blood bank in Londrina, Paraná State.

Background: For transfusion purposes, blood donors must be accepted both in clinical and serological evaluations and must not have excluded their own donation using the confidential unit exclusion.

Aim: The objective of this study was to verify whether blood donors who choose self exclusion are more likely to be positive in serological tests than donors who do not.

Methods: A cross-sectional analysis was carried out of 51,861 consecutive whole blood donations from January 2004 to December 2008 at a public blood bank in Londrina, Southern Brazil.

Allosteric interaction of the anticholinergic drug [N-(4-phenyl)-phenacyl-l-hyoscyamine] (Phenthonium) with nicotinic receptors of post-ganglionic sympathetic neurons of the rat vas deferens.

Phenthonium (Phen), a quaternary analog of hyoscyamine, is a blocker of muscarinic activity and an allosteric blocker of alpha(1)2betagammaepsilon nicotinic receptors. Specifically, Phenthonium increases the spontaneous release of acetylcholine at the motor endplate without depolarizing the muscle or inhibiting cholinesterase activity. This paper compares Phenthonium's effects on sympathetic transmission and on ganglionic nicotinic receptor activation.

Measurement of cytotoxic activity in experimental cancer.

Several tumor cell systems have been developed for investigating the cytotoxic activity of different substances. The Ehrlich ascytic tumor (EAT) has been studied extensively and used to increase our comprehension of immunotherapy (Yamamoto and Naraparaju. Cancer Res 57:2187-2192, 1997).