New surfactant with SP-B and C analogs gives survival benefit after inactivation in preterm lambs.

Background: Respiratory distress syndrome in preterm babies is caused by a pulmonary surfactant deficiency, but also by its inactivation due to various conditions, including plasma protein leakage. Surfactant replacement therapy is well established, but clinical observations and in vitro experiments suggested that its efficacy may be impaired by inactivation. A new synthetic surfactant (CHF 5633), containing synthetic surfactant protein B and C analogs, has shown comparable effects on oxygenation in ventilated preterm rabbits versus Poractant alfa, but superior resistance against inactivation in vitro.

Modulation of aerosol clouds produced by pressurised inhalation aerosols.

The inclusion of non-volatile components such as glycerol or polyethylene glycol in hydrofluoralkane (HFA) solution formulations for pressurised metered dose inhalers (pMDIs), greatly increases the particle size of the aerosol. Cloud characteristics can be further modulated by permuting this factor with the choice of propellant and the dimensions of the actuator, to give a chosen fine particle dose and particle diameter. This principle has been used to design solutions which closely match the performance of chlorofluorocarbon based suspension formulations containing beclomethasone dipropionate, budesonide and ipratropium bromide as assessed for pharmaceutical equivalence using the Andersen Cascade impactor.

Vision and attention. II: Is visual attention a mechanism through which a deficient magnocellular pathway might cause reading disability?

Recent research in reading disability has discovered that at least some reading-disabled subjects have deficits in their magnocellular (M) visual pathways. However, the mechanism by which M pathway deficits affect reading has not been addressed. Abnormal attention has long been known to be associated with reading-disabled individuals, and new research in visual attention has determined that transient visual attention is dominated by M-stream inputs.

A defective visual pathway in children with reading disability.

Background: The possibility that reading disability in children is associated with visual problems is in dispute. We sought to test the existence of this association by using electrophysiologic techniques to measure the processing of visual information in the magnicellular and parvicellular visual pathways of the brain.

Methods: Visual evoked potentials were measured with scalp electrodes in children 8 to 11 years old who were normal readers and in those with reading disability.