Therapeutic Plasma Exchange to Reverse Plasma Failure in Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome.

Plasma plays a crucial role in maintaining health through regulating coagulation and inflammation. Both are essential to respond to homeostatic threats such as traumatic injury or microbial infection; however, left unchecked, they can themselves cause damage. A well-functioning plasma regulatory milieu controls the location, intensity, and duration of the response to injury or infection.

Tandem Therapeutic Plasma Exchange Reduces Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Downtime.

Introduction: Continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) has become a primary treatment of severe acute kidney injury in children admitted to the intensive care unit. CRRT "downtime" (when the circuit is not active) can represent a significant portion of the prescribed treatment time and adversely affects clearance. The objective of this study was to evaluate factors associated with CRRT "downtime" and to determine whether instituting a tandem therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) protocol could significantly and robustly decrease circuit downtime in patients receiving both therapies.

Coronary Revascularization During Heart Regeneration Is Regulated by Epicardial and Endocardial Cues and Forms a Scaffold for Cardiomyocyte Repopulation.

Defective coronary network function and insufficient blood supply are both cause and consequence of myocardial infarction. Efficient revascularization after infarction is essential to support tissue repair and function. Zebrafish hearts exhibit a remarkable ability to regenerate, and coronary revascularization initiates within hours of injury, but how this process is regulated remains unknown.

Vegfaa instructs cardiac muscle hyperplasia in adult zebrafish.

During heart development and regeneration, coronary vascularization is tightly coupled with cardiac growth. Although inhibiting vascularization causes defects in the innate regenerative response of zebrafish to heart injury, angiogenic signals are not known to be sufficient for triggering regeneration events. Here, by using a transgenic reporter strain, we found that regulatory sequences of the angiogenic factor are active in epicardial cells of uninjured animals, as well as in epicardial and endocardial tissue adjacent to regenerating muscle upon injury.

Resolving Heart Regeneration by Replacement Histone Profiling.

Chromatin regulation is a principal mechanism governing animal development, yet it is unclear to what extent structural changes in chromatin underlie tissue regeneration. Non-mammalian vertebrates such as zebrafish activate cardiomyocyte (CM) division after tissue damage to regenerate lost heart muscle. Here, we generated transgenic zebrafish expressing a biotinylatable H3.

Multicolor mapping of the cardiomyocyte proliferation dynamics that construct the atrium.

The orchestrated division of cardiomyocytes assembles heart chambers of distinct morphology. To understand the structural divergence of the cardiac chambers, we determined the contributions of individual embryonic cardiomyocytes to the atrium in zebrafish by multicolor fate-mapping and we compare our analysis to the established proliferation dynamics of ventricular cardiomyocytes. We find that most atrial cardiomyocytes become rod-shaped in the second week of life, generating a single-muscle-cell-thick myocardial wall with a striking webbed morphology.

Building and re-building the heart by cardiomyocyte proliferation.

The adult human heart does not regenerate significant amounts of lost tissue after injury. Rather than making new, functional muscle, human hearts are prone to scarring and hypertrophy, which can often lead to fatal arrhythmias and heart failure. The most-cited basis of this ineffective cardiac regeneration in mammals is the low proliferative capacity of adult cardiomyocytes.