Pitfalls in the ultrasonographic diagnosis of pneumothorax.

In recent years, point-of-care ultrasound has become a useful technique for assisting in rapid diagnosis or exclusion of pneumothorax. It has been shown to have excellent sensitivity and specificity. Despite this, we present a case of a large pneumothorax that was not detected by bedside ultrasound.

Cryptococcal meningitis in a tertiary hospital in Pretoria, mortality and risk factors - A retrospective cohort study.

Aim This retrospective cohort study analyzes the impact of possible risk factors on the survival chance of patients with cryptococcal meningitis. These factors include the patient's socio-economic background, age, gender, presenting symptoms, comorbidities, laboratory findings and, in particular, non-adherence versus adherence to therapy. Methods Data were collected from all adult patients admitted to Kalafong Hospital with laboratory confirmed cryptococcal meningitis over a period of 24 months.

Early alterations in heart gene expression profiles associated with doxorubicin cardiotoxicity in rats.

Purpose: The antineoplastic anthracycline doxorubicin can induce a dose-dependent cardiomyopathy that limits the total cumulative dose prescribed to cancer patients. In both preclinical and clinical studies, pretreatment with dexrazoxane, an intracellular iron chelator, partially protects against anthracycline-induced cardiomyopathy. To identify potential additional cardioprotective treatment strategies, we investigated early doxorubicin-induced changes in cardiac gene expression.

Characterization of the effect of sample quality on high density oligonucleotide microarray data using progressively degraded rat liver RNA.

Background: The interpretability of microarray data can be affected by sample quality. To systematically explore how RNA quality affects microarray assay performance, a set of rat liver RNA samples with a progressive change in RNA integrity was generated by thawing frozen tissue or by ex vivo incubation of fresh tissue over a time course.

Results: Incubation of tissue at 37 degrees C for several hours had little effect on RNA integrity, but did induce changes in the transcript levels of stress response genes and immune cell markers.