Gilbert syndrome and ischemic heart disease: a protective effect of elevated bilirubin levels.

Background: Oxidation processes play an important role in atherogenesis. Bilirubin IXalpha is recognised as a potent antioxidant. In the present study, we assessed the role of elevated serum bilirubin levels in the prevention of ischemic heart disease (IHD).

Bilirubin-IXalpha and -IXbeta pigments, coproporphyrins and bile acids in meconium and stools from full-term and preterm neonates during the first month of life.

Unlabelled: Individual bilirubin pigments in the excreta were quantitated by newly developed methods. In meconium, bilirubin-IXbeta predominated, whereas bilirubin-IXgamma and -IXdelta remained undetectable. The daily excretion of bilirubin-IXalpha plus -IXbeta was 0.

Intestinal colonization leading to fecal urobilinoid excretion may play a role in the pathogenesis of neonatal jaundice.

Background: Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia remains of concern because of the potential danger for the central nervous system. Because urobilinogen is a nontoxic derivative of bilirubin, the current study was conducted to examine the fecal excretion of urobilinoids and bilirubin in healthy newborns and infants, as well as their intestinal bacteria capable of reducing bilirubin, to assess a possible relation to serum bilirubin levels during the first weeks of life.

Methods: Bilirubin pigments, urobilinoids, and porphyrins were measured in stools of infants during the first week (group A, n = 60) and between the second week and the first 6 months of life (group B, n = 64).

[Self-medication of the common cold].

Self-medication can be useful in the multisymptomatic management of the common cold and other preferentially non-febrile flu-like symptoms, especially as at present multicomponent remedies are available, which may make self-medication significantly easier with consequent better compliance of adult patients. Children, on the contrary, are not suitable acceptants of self-medication mediated by their parents because the sickness exhibits in children nearly exclusively febrile progress. The procedure of the therapy to be really effective and safe must be necessarily concentrated into pharmacies, where safety and efficacy of therapy are ensured by the pharmacist as the last link of contact between the patient and the drug.

Intestinal excretion of unconjugated bilirubin in man and rats with inherited unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia.

Patients with Crigler-Najjar syndrome and Gunn rats cannot form bilirubin glucuronides owing to a lack of bilirubin UDP-glucuronosyltransferase activity. Because increased serum and tissue bilirubin levels remain constant, an alternative excretory route has to substitute for this deficiency. Gunn rats excrete in bile only 2-13% of the bilirubins eliminated in Wistar rats.