Financial implications of laparoscopic hot gallbladder service in a nontertiary District General Hospital.

Introduction: The service of providing index admission laparoscopic cholecystectomy (IALC), as recommended by NIC guidelines, often falls short in nontertiary centres because of a combination of limited resources and financial constraints.

Methods: This retrospective study in a single-centre District General Hospital included 50 patients, eligible to undergo IALC, and calculated potential savings from performing IALC on the day of admission by considering admission tariffs, bed, and operating costs.

Results: The IALC was provided in 19 patients (38%), with a mean delay from admission to operation of (median) 3 days.

Serial NSE measurement identifies non-survivors following out of hospital cardiac arrest.

Aims: Prognostication following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains challenging. A multimodal approach is favoured, including consideration of the biomarker neuron-specific enolase (NSE) (Sandroni et al., 2014).

Suppression of HIV-1 infection by APOBEC3 proteins in primary human CD4(+) T cells is associated with inhibition of processive reverse transcription as well as excessive cytidine deamination.

The Vif protein of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) promotes viral replication by downregulation of the cell-encoded, antiviral APOBEC3 proteins. These proteins exert their suppressive effects through the inhibition of viral reverse transcription as well as the induction of cytidine deamination within nascent viral cDNA. Importantly, these two effects have not been characterized in detail in human CD4(+) T cells, leading to controversies over their possible contributions to viral inhibition in the natural cell targets of HIV-1 replication.

Evaluating cytochrome c diffusion in the intermembrane spaces of mitochondria during cytochrome c release.

Truncated Bid (tBid) releases cytochrome c from mitochondria by inducing Bak (and Bax) pore formation in the outer membrane. An important issue is whether a second tBid action, independent of Bak and Bax, is also required to enhance cytochrome c mobility in the intermembrane spaces. To investigate this, we developed a kinetic analysis enabling changes in the diffusibility of cytochrome c in the intermembrane spaces of isolated mitochondria to be differentiated from changes resulting from Bak activation.