Do intracellular, extracellular or urinary magnesium concentrations predict renal retention of magnesium in critically ill patients?

Background And Objective: Magnesium disorders are common in hospitalized patients. In patients with low or normal magnesium, the intravenous magnesium loading test has been demonstrated to be a sensitive test to assess magnesium deficiency in critically ill patients. However, it is more time consuming and more difficult than the measurement of intracellular or extracellular magnesium concentrations.

CPAP-therapy effectively lowers serum homocysteine in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome.

Assessment of serum total homocysteine (tHcy) in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome is highly relevant since both are strongly associated with stroke and cognitive dysfunction. Seven of 16 untreated OSA patients showed tHcy levels exceeding 11.7 micromol/l.

CSF lactate dehydrogenase activity in patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease exceeds that in other dementias.

The diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is still made by exclusion of other dementias. We now evaluated lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as a possible additional diagnostic tool. CSF LDH levels of patients with CJD (n = 26) were compared with those in other dementias (n = 28).

Determination of thiopurine methyltransferase phenotype in isolated human erythrocytes using a new simple nonradioactive HPLC method.

Genetic polymorphism of the S-methylation pathway catalyzed by thiopurine methyltransferase (TPMT) is responsible for variation in the metabolism, toxicity, and therapeutic efficacy of thiopurine drugs. This paper describe a new simple, nonradioactive HPLC method for determination of TPMT activity in isolated erythrocytes (Ery), based on the conversion of 6-mercaptopurine (pH 7.5, 37 degrees C) to 6-methylmercaptopurine (6-MMP) using S-adenosyl-l-methionine as methyl donor.