Multicentre, prospective, observational study investigating the most appropriate surgical option that can prevent the recurrence of primary spontaneous pneumothorax after surgery: the PATCH study, protocol.

Introduction: Thoracoscopic surgery is performed for refractory or recurrent primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP). To reduce postoperative recurrence, additional treatment is occasionally adopted during surgery after bulla resection. However, the most effective method has not been fully elucidated.

Prosaposin overexpression following kainic acid-induced neurotoxicity.

Because excessive glutamate release is believed to play a pivotal role in numerous neuropathological disorders, such as ischemia or seizure, we aimed to investigate whether intrinsic prosaposin (PS), a neuroprotective factor when supplied exogenously in vivo or in vitro, is up-regulated after the excitotoxicity induced by kainic acid (KA), a glutamate analog. In the present study, PS immunoreactivity and its mRNA expression in the hippocampal and cortical neurons showed significant increases on day 3 after KA injection, and high PS levels were maintained even after 3 weeks. The increase in PS, but not saposins, detected by immunoblot analysis suggests that the increase in PS-like immunoreactivity after KA injection was not due to an increase in saposins as lysosomal enzymes after neuronal damage, but rather to an increase in PS as a neurotrophic factor to improve neuronal survival.