Silage review: Safety considerations during silage making and feeding.

Silage-related injury knows no age boundary as workers and bystanders of all ages have been killed in silage accidents. Even the best employee can become frustrated with malfunctioning equipment and poor weather conditions and take a hazardous shortcut, or misjudge a situation and take a risky action. At least 6 hazards are encountered in managing silage in bunker silos and drive-over piles that endanger lives: tractor or truck rollover, run-over by or entanglement in machinery, fall from height, crushing by an avalanche or collapsing silage, silage gases, and complacency or fatigue.

The prognostic value of cord blood analysis in erythropoietic protoporphyria: the 'Duesseldorf Cord Blood Study'.

Background: Erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP) is the most common porphyria in childhood, presenting with painful and burning skin sensations as well as erythema and edema after sun exposure. It represents an inherited disorder of heme metabolism that is due to a reduced ferrochelatase enzyme activity. The diagnosis is usually established when symptoms start by measuring elevated levels of protoporphyrin in erythrocytes.

Identification of mutations in the uroporphyrinogen III cosynthase gene in German patients with congenital erythropoietic porphyria.

The porphyrias are heterogeneous disorders arising from predominantly inherited catalytic deficiencies of specific enzymes along the heme biosynthetic pathway. Congenital erythropoietic porphyria is a very rare disease that is inherited as an autosomal recessive trait and results from a profound deficiency of uroporphyrinogen III cosynthase, the fourth enzyme in heme biosynthesis. The degree of severity of clinical symptoms mainly depends on the amount of residual uroporphyrinogen III cosynthase activity.

[High-dose vitamin therapy as prophylaxis against porphyria cutanea uremica].

50 Patients with chronic renal failure undergoing hemodialysis with or without porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT)-like skin changes were investigated. The total porphyrin amount in erythrocytes, plasma and dialysate and the distribution of porphyrin metabolites in plasma and dialysate were measured. In plasma, the group of patients with skin changes (referred as PCU = porphyria cutanea uremica) showed significantly increased uroporphyrin levels as compared to the non-symptomatic group.