'Managing an unexpected life - a caregiver's career': Parents' experience of caring for their child with a non-malignant life-limiting condition.

Parents of children with non-malignant life-limiting conditions frequently accept roles that exceed the conventional activities of parenting in relation to the intensity, complexity and temporal nature of the family caregiver experience. This paper explores the prevalent and all-consuming experiences of parents caring for their children. A qualitative descriptive study design was used.

'With every fibre of their being': Perspectives of healthcare professionals caring for children with non-malignant life-limiting conditions.

Background: Children with non-malignant life-limiting conditions (NMLLCs) constitute the largest proportion of children requiring palliative care. In part, due to technological advances, growing numbers of such children are experiencing improved survival. Care is mostly provided at home by the family, with significant professional input at different points in the child's life trajectory.

'Starting Out in Haziness': Parental Experiences Surrounding the Diagnosis of their Child's Non-Malignant Life-Limiting Condition in Ireland.

Purpose: To explore parental experiences surrounding the diagnosis of their child's non-malignant life-limiting condition.

Design And Methods: A qualitative descriptive study design using single-occasion one-to-one semi-structured interviews collected data from twenty-three parents of children diagnosed with non-malignant life-limiting conditions.

Findings: 'Starting out in haziness' was the central concept when parents' recounted the time they learnt of their child's diagnosis.

Transplantation of novel human GDF5-expressing CHO cells is neuroprotective in models of Parkinson's disease.

Growth/differentiation factor 5 (GDF5) is a neurotrophic factor that promotes the survival of midbrain dopaminergic neurons in vitro and in vivo and as such is potentially useful in the treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD). This study shows that a continuous supply of GDF5, produced by transplanted GDF5-overexpressing CHO cells in vivo, has neuroprotective and neurorestorative effects on midbrain dopaminergic neurons following 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)-induced lesions of the adult rat nigrostriatal pathway. It also increases the survival and improves the function of transplanted embryonic dopaminergic neurons in the 6-OHDA-lesioned rat model of PD.

Neuroprotective effects of delayed administration of growth/differentiation factor-5 in the partial lesion model of Parkinson's disease.

Neurotrophic factors have the potential for therapeutic use in Parkinson's disease (PD) to support the remaining dopaminergic neurons and protect them against the ongoing disease process. We have examined the effects of the neurotrophin growth and differentiation factor-5 (GDF-5) in a rat model of Parkinson's disease, the intrastriatal 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) lesion. GDF-5 (25 microg) was injected into either the striatum or substantia nigra (SN) of adult rats at 1 or 2 weeks after 6-hydroxydopamine administration.