Preparation and evaluation of thermally stable nano-structured self-doped polythiophene coating for analysis of phthalate ester trace levels.

Nano-structured self-doped polythiophene (SPT) electrodeposited in the presence of fluorinated organic acid was applied as a thermally stable conductive polymer-based solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fiber candidate. Quantitative determination of trace levels of phthalate esters including dimethyl phthalate (DMP), diethyl phthalate (DEP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), and diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) was carried out using this novel fiber, coupling with gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID). The SPT coating was proved to be stable at high temperatures (∼350°C) with a high extraction capacity and long lifetime (more than 60 times).

Prevalence of peripheral blood cytopenias (hypersplenism) in patients with nonalcoholic chronic liver disease.

Objective: Thrombocytopenia or leukopenia in patients with chronic liver disease is often attributed to functional overactivity of the spleen (hypersplenism). Despite being a fairly common phenomenon, there is a paucity of reports on the prevalence of this syndrome in stable chronic liver disease patients with or without severe fibrosis/cirrhosis. The aim of this study was to establish the prevalence of peripheral blood cytopenia in patients with nonalcoholic cirrhosis/severe fibrosis versus patients with mild or no fibrosis on liver biopsy.

Effect of controlled ventilation on renal and splanchnic blood flows during nicotine.

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the influence of respiratory condition [free breathing (FB) vs. controlled ventilation (CV)] and of anesthetic [pentobarbital (PA) vs. chloralose (CA)] on nicotine-induced vasomotor responses in the renal cortex and splanchnic beds.

Persistent coronary vasodilation during long-term, supramaximal doses of adenosine.

Active and reactive hyperemias have been observed in the skeletal muscle circulation tachyphylactic to exogenous adenosine following 3-h supramaximal doses of the vasodilator. These findings failed to support a need for adenosine in metabolic control of skeletal muscle blood flow. The present study was conducted to determine if the coronary circulation also develops tachyphylaxis to adenosine while remaining sensitive to other metabolically linked vasodilator mechanisms.

Regional blood flow in canine brain during nicotine infusion: pentobarbital vs. chloralose anesthesia.

We compared vasoactive effects of intravenous nicotine (36 micrograms/kg/min) in regional cerebral circulations under pentobarbital and chloralose anesthesia. Experiments were conducted in three groups of dogs: Group I, pentobarbital anesthesia with fixed ventilation; Group II, chloralose anesthesia with fixed ventilation; Group III, chloralose anesthesia with free breathing. Values for regional cerebral blood flow measured with 15 mu radioactive microspheres were used to compute regional cerebral vascular resistance (rCBR).