Drugs, gene transfer, signaling factors: a bench to bedside approach to myocardial stem cell therapy.

In the past few years, the dogma that the heart is a terminally differentiated organ has been challenged. Evidence from preclinical investigations emerged that there are cells, even in the heart itself, that may be able to restore impaired cardiac function after myocardial infarction. Although the exact mechanisms by which the infarcted heart can be repaired by stem cells are not yet fully defined, there is a new optimism among cardiologists that this treatment will prove successful in addressing the cause of heart failure after myocardial infarction-myocyte loss.

[Endoscopy in pregnancy].

Assessing the need of endoscopy and performing the examination is a difficult task which requires an experienced investigator. Though it is prudent to postpone the investigation to the third trimester or rather to the postpartum period; in certain clinical situations like upper gastrointestinal bleeding or biliary pancreatitis it is not possible; endoscopic intervention has to be performed in these cases just like in non-pregnant patients. There is a paucity of data in medical literature to rely on and the retrospective nature of these data makes it even more problematic.

Remote ischaemic postconditioning protects the heart during acute myocardial infarction in pigs.

Background: Ischaemic preconditioning results in a reduction in ischaemic-reperfusion injury to the heart. This beneficial effect is seen both with direct local preconditioning of the myocardium and with remote preconditioning of easily accessible distant non-vital limb tissue. Ischaemic postconditioning with a comparable sequence of brief periods of local ischaemia, when applied immediately after the ischaemic insult, confers benefits similar to preconditioning.