The Dutch list of essential drugs for undergraduate medical education: A modified Delphi study.

Aims: Prescribing errors among junior doctors are common in clinical practice because many lack prescribing competence after graduation. This is in part due to inadequate education in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CP&T) in the undergraduate medical curriculum. To support CP&T education, it is important to determine which drugs medical undergraduates should be able to prescribe safely and effectively without direct supervision by the time they graduate.

Improving membrane based multiplex immunoassays for semi-quantitative detection of multiple cytokines in a single sample.

Background: Inflammatory mediators can serve as biomarkers for the monitoring of the disease progression or prognosis in many conditions. In the present study we introduce an adaptation of a membrane-based technique in which the level of up to 40 cytokines and chemokines can be determined in both human and rodent blood in a semi-quantitative way. The planar assay was modified using the LI-COR (R) detection system (fluorescence based) rather than chemiluminescence and semi-quantitative outcomes were achieved by normalizing the outcomes using the automated exposure settings of the Odyssey readout device.

Myocardial collagen metabolism in failing hearts before and during cardiac resynchronization therapy.

Background: In patients with heart failure cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) leads to reverse ventricular remodelling.

Aim: To evaluate whether myocardial collagen metabolism in patients with heart failure is implicated in adverse ventricular remodelling and response to CRT.

Methods: Collagen synthesis and degradation were assessed from the concentrations of aminoterminal propeptides of type I and type III collagen (PINP and PIIINP) and carboxyterminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP), respectively, in serum of 64 patients with heart failure before and after 6 months of CRT.

Reverse ventricular remodelling after cardiac resynchronization therapy is associated with a reduction in serum tenascin-C and plasma matrix metalloproteinase-9 levels.

Background: In heart failure patients, cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) leads to reverse ventricular remodelling.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether changes in levels of circulating biomarkers of extracellular matrix metabolism correlate with the response to CRT.

Methods And Results: Clinical parameters, left ventricular (LV) volumes, and circulating levels of tenascin-C (TNC), matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), MMP-9, and amino-terminal propeptide of brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) were assessed in 64 patients at baseline and 6 months follow-up.

Characterization of right ventricular function after monocrotaline-induced pulmonary hypertension in the intact rat.

We characterized hemodynamics and systolic and diastolic right ventricular (RV) function in relation to structural changes in the rat model of monocrotaline (MCT)-induced pulmonary hypertension. Rats were treated with MCT at 30 mg/kg body wt (MCT30, n = 15) and 80 mg/kg body wt (MCT80, n = 16) to induce compensated RV hypertrophy and RV failure, respectively. Saline-treated rats served as control (Cont, n = 13).