Antidepressants for hip and knee osteoarthritis.

Background: Although pain is common in osteoarthritis, most people fail to achieve adequate analgesia. Increasing acknowledgement of the contribution of pain sensitisation has resulted in the investigation of medications affecting pain processing with central effects. Antidepressants contribute to pain management in other conditions where pain sensitisation is present.

Comprehensive comparative genomics reveals over 50 phyla of free-living and pathogenic bacteria are associated with diverse members of the amoebozoa.

The Amoebozoa, a group containing predominantly amoeboid unicellular protists has been shown to play an important ecological role in controlling environmental bacteria. Amoebozoans not only graze bacteria but also serve as a safe niche for bacterial replication and harbor endosymbiotic bacteria including dangerous human pathogens. Despite their importance, only a few lineages of Amoebozoa have been studied in this regard.

Transglutaminases Are Active in Perivascular Adipose Tissue.

Transglutaminases (TGs) are crosslinking enzymes best known for their vascular remodeling in hypertension. They require calcium to form an isopeptide bond, connecting a glutamine to a protein bound lysine residue or a free amine donor such as norepinephrine (NE) or serotonin (5-HT). We discovered that perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) contains significant amounts of these amines, making PVAT an ideal model to test interactions of amines and TGs.

Establishing a Telephone Medication Order Policy and Protocol for a Small Private Hospital in Jamaica.

Objective: To institutionalize an evidence-based policy/protocol adapted from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) national medication standards for managing telephone medication orders (TMO) and to determine the impact of the policy/protocol on the number of telephone medication errors (TME) on two medical units of a small private hospital in Jamaica.

Methods: Kotter's Eight-step Change Model was used to facilitate organizational change among nurses and physicians by teaching and implementing the TMO policy/protocol adapted from AHRQ standards and collecting pre-policy and post-policy frequency of TMEs. A convenience sample of 80 nurses and physicians participated in training about the policy/protocol, took post-instructional tests and participated in the implementation of the policy/protocol.