Antibiotic cement-coated plates for management of infected fractures.

Deep infection in the presence of an implant after open reduction and internal fixation is usually treated with removal of the implant, serial débridement procedures, lavage, intravenously administered antibiotics, and occasionally, placement of antibiotic-impregnated beads. If infection occurs during the early stages of bone healing, fracture stabilization might be compromised after implant removal. Osteomyelitis, unstable owing to a bone deficit or fracture, was treated with an antibiotic cement-coated (tobramycin and vancomycin) plate.

Practical aspects of foot and ankle arthroscopy.

Arthroscopy of the foot and ankle, although sometimes technically challenging, is a useful tool for the foot and ankle surgeon. Burman in 1931 was the first to attempt arthoscopy of the ankle joint and surmised that it was not a suitable joint for arthroscopy because of its narrow intra-articular space. With the development of smaller-diameter arthroscopes and improvements in joint distraction techniques, Watanabe was the first to present a series of 28 ankle arthroscopes in 1972.

Precise intraoperative 60 degrees Skin Z-plasty.

The primary objective of this tip is to assist foot and ankle surgeons in performing a precise 60 degrees lengthening Z-plasty in the operating room without the use of a template or protractor. A ruler and basic trigonometric principles are applied to the line of contracture to obtain consistent and reliable results.

Prostate specific antigen as a clinical biomarker for prostate cancer: what's the take home message?

Prostate specific antigen (PSA) continues to be challenged as a legitimate clinical biomarker in early detection of prostate cancer due to lack of specificity for malignant transformation. Skepticism surrounding the utility of serum PSA as a clinical marker is not new and many questioned its initial use in widespread prostate cancer screening due to non-specific expression and low predictive value for cancer detection. Despite these initial concerns, serum PSA measurement along with digital rectal examination (DRE) is currently the accepted practice for prostate cancer screening in the United States with hundreds of thousands of men undergoing serum PSA measurement annually.

The orphan nuclear receptor LRH-1 activates the ABCG5/ABCG8 intergenic promoter.

The ATP binding cassette (ABC) half-transporters ABCG5 and ABCG8 facilitate biliary and intestinal removal of neutral sterols. Here, we identify a binding site for the orphan nuclear receptor liver receptor homolog-1 (LRH-1) at nt 134-142 of the ABCG5/ABCG8 intergenic region necessary for the activity of both the ABCG5 and ABCG8 promoters. Mutating this LRH-1 binding site reduced promoter activity of the human ABCG5/ABCG8 intergenic region more than 7-fold in HepG2 and Caco2 cells.

Synthetic amphipathic helical peptides promote lipid efflux from cells by an ABCA1-dependent and an ABCA1-independent pathway.

In order to examine the necessary structural features for a protein to promote lipid efflux by the ABCA1 transporter, synthetic peptides were tested on ABCA1-transfected cells (ABCA1 cells) and on control cells. L-37pA, an l amino acid peptide that contains two class-A amphipathic helices linked by proline, showed a 4-fold increase in cholesterol and phospholipid efflux from ABCA1 cells compared to control cells. The same peptide synthesized with a mixture of l and d amino acids was less effective than L-37pA in solubilizing dimyristoyl phosphatidyl choline vesicles and in effluxing lipids.

Comparative genome analysis of potential regulatory elements in the ABCG5-ABCG8 gene cluster.

The excretion of sterols from the liver and intestine is regulated by the ABCG5 and ABCG8 transporters. To identify potential regulatory elements, 152 kb of the human ABCG5-ABCG8 gene cluster was sequenced and comparative genome analysis was performed. The two genes are oriented in a head-to-head configuration and are separated by a 374-bp intergenic region, which is highly conserved among several species.