A new surface plasmon resonance-based immunoassay for rapid, reproducible and sensitive quantification of pentraxin-3 in human plasma.

A new immunoassay based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) for the rapid, reproducible and sensitive determination of pentraxin-3 (PTX3) levels in human plasma has been developed and characterized. The method involves a 3-min flow of plasma over a sensor chip pre-coated with a monoclonal anti-PTX3 antibody (MNB4), followed by a 3-min flow of a polyclonal anti-PTX3 antibody (pAb), required for specific recognition of captured PTX3. The SPR signal generated with this secondary antibody linearly correlates with the plasma PTX3 concentration, in the range of 5-1500 ng/mL, with a lowest limit of detection of 5 ng/mL.

Memantine prevents reference and working memory impairment caused by sleep deprivation in both young and aged Octodon degus.

Memory loss is one of the key features of cognitive impairment in either aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or dementia. Pharmacological treatments for memory loss are today focused on addressing symptomatology. One of these approved compounds is memantine, a partial NMDA receptor antagonist that has proved its beneficial effects in cognition.

Ranolazine ameliorates postresuscitation electrical instability and myocardial dysfunction and improves survival with good neurologic recovery in a rat model of cardiac arrest.

Background: During ischemia, enhancement of the "late Na+ current" (I(NaL)) contributes to intracellular Ca2+ overload. Dysregulation of intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis plays a critical role in the pathophysiology of cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), leading to ventricular arrhythmias and left ventricle (LV) dysfunction.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the I(NaL) blocker ranolazine on outcome of CPR in a rat model.

Blood protein coating of gold nanoparticles as potential tool for organ targeting.

Nanoparticles (NP) and nanoparticulated drug delivery promise to be the breakthrough for therapy in medicine but raise concerns in terms of nanotoxicity. We present quantitative murine biokinetics assays using polyelectrolyte-multilayer-coated gold NP (AuNP, core diameter 15 and 80 nm; (198)Au radio-labeled). Those were stably conjugated either with human serum albumin (alb-AuNP) or apolipoprotein E (apoE-AuNP), prior to intravenous injection.

Doxycycline in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: a phase 2, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Background: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a fatal, untreatable prion encephalopathy. Previous studies showed that doxycycline is effective in in-vitro and in-vivo models of disease, and patients with CJD who received compassionate treatment with doxycycline showed increased survival time compared with historical series. We therefore did a randomised, double-blind study of doxycycline versus placebo in CJD.