Automated High-Throughput Damage Scoring of Zebrafish Lateral Line Hair Cells After Ototoxin Exposure.

Zebrafish have emerged as a powerful biological system for drug development against hearing loss. Zebrafish hair cells, contained within neuromasts along the lateral line, can be damaged with exposure to ototoxins, and therefore, pre-exposure to potentially otoprotective compounds can be a means of identifying promising new drug candidates. Unfortunately, anatomical assays of hair cell damage are typically low-throughput and labor intensive, requiring trained experts to manually score hair cell damage in fluorescence or confocal images.

A Fully Automated High-Throughput Zebrafish Behavioral Ototoxicity Assay.

Zebrafish animal models lend themselves to behavioral assays that can facilitate rapid screening of ototoxic, otoprotective, and otoregenerative drugs. Structurally similar to human inner ear hair cells, the mechanosensory hair cells on their lateral line allow the zebrafish to sense water flow and orient head-to-current in a behavior called rheotaxis. This rheotaxis behavior deteriorates in a dose-dependent manner with increased exposure to the ototoxin cisplatin, thereby establishing itself as an excellent biomarker for anatomic damage to lateral line hair cells.

Older Individuals Meeting Medicare Cochlear Implant Candidacy Criteria in Noise but Not in Quiet: Are These Patients Improved by Surgery?

Objective: To investigate postoperative hearing outcomes in older patients who qualified for cochlear implant (CI) by Medicare criteria using AZBio sentence tests performed in noise but not in quiet.

Study Design: Review of patient records.

Setting: University-based otology/neurotology practice.

Evaluating the control: minipump implantation and breathing behavior in the neonatal rat.

We evaluated genioglossus (GG) gross motoneuron morphology, electromyographic (EMG) activities, and respiratory patterning in rat pups allowed to develop without interference (unexposed) and pups born to dams subjected to osmotic minipump implantation in utero (saline-exposed). In experiment 1, 48 Sprague-Dawley rat pups (Charles-River Laboratories), ages postnatal day 7 (P7) through postnatal day 10 (P10), were drawn from two experimental groups, saline-exposed (n = 24) and unexposed (n = 24), and studied on P7, P8, P9, or P10. Pups in both groups were sedated (Inactin hydrate, 70 mg/kg), and fine-wire electrodes were inserted into the GG muscle of the tongue and intercostal muscles to record EMG activities during breathing in air and at three levels of normoxic hypercapnia [inspired CO2 fraction (FiCO2 ): 0.

The Case for Using Evidence-Based Guidelines in Setting Hospital and Public Health Policy.

Objective: Hospital systems and regulating agencies enforce strict guidelines barring personal items from entering the operating room (OR) - touting surgical site infections (SSIs) and patient safety as the rationale. We sought to determine whether or not evidence supporting this recommendation exists by reviewing available literature.

Background Data: Rules and guidelines that are not evidence based may lead to increased hospital expenses and limitations on healthcare provider autonomy.

Zebrafish swimming behavior as a biomarker for ototoxicity-induced hair cell damage: a high-throughput drug development platform targeting hearing loss.

Hearing loss is one of the most common human sensory disabilities, adversely affecting communication, socialization, mood, physical functioning, and quality of life. In addition to age and noise-induced damage, ototoxicity is a common cause of sensorineural hearing loss with chemotherapeutic agents, for example, cisplatin, being a major contributor. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are an excellent model to study hearing loss as they have neurosensory hair cells on their body surface that are structurally similar to those within the human inner ear.

Developmental nicotine exposure adversely effects respiratory patterning in the barbiturate anesthetized neonatal rat.

Neonates at risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are hospitalized for cardiorespiratory monitoring however, monitoring is costly and generates large quantities of averaged data that serve as poor predictors of infant risk. In this study we used a traditional autocorrelation function (ACF) testing its suitability as a tool to detect subtle alterations in respiratory patterning in vivo. We applied the ACF to chest wall motion tracings obtained from rat pups in the period corresponding to the mid-to-end of the third trimester of human pregnancy.

Neural drive to respiratory muscles in the spontaneously breathing rat pup.

The neonatal rodent serves as useful and appropriate model within which to study respiratory system development. Despite an extensive literature that documents respiratory control in vitro, in vivo studies have relied upon whole body plethysmography to determine measures of respiratory frequency and tidal volume. However, plethysmography restricts access to the animal and thus, respiratory muscle electromyographic (EMG) activities have not been recorded in these studies previously.