Lansoprazole, ranitidine, and metoclopramide: comparison of practice patterns at 4 level III NICUs within one healthcare system.

Purpose: Evidence is needed to guide NICU use of lansoprazole (Prevacid), ranitidine (Zantac), and metoclopramide (Reglan). As a step toward that goal, we conducted a historic cohort analysis of all patients who received any of these medications in 4 Intermountain Healthcare NICUs during the year 2006.

Subjects: Data were obtained from all patients admitted between January 1 and December 31, 2006, to any of 4 Intermountain Healthcare NICUs.

Size control goes global.

The size of cells, tissues and organisms is a fundamental yet poorly understood attribute of biological systems. Traditional difficulties in interrogating the basis for size regulation have been surmounted by recent systematic phenotypic analyses. Genome-wide size screens in yeast suggest that ribosome biogenesis rate dictates cell size thresholds, whereas analogous RNAi-based size screens in metazoans cells reveal further connections between cell size and translation, as well as myriad other pathways.