[Aggregation function of platelets in persons with arterial hypertension and abdominal obesity].

In patients with arterial hypertension (AH) accompanied by abdominal obesity (AO) increase in platelets adhesive and aggregation functions was noted in vitro and in vivo. The cause of these disturbances is blood serum and platelets lipid peroxidation activation, increase in synthesis of Willebrand's factor in a vascular wall, and intensification of thromboxane production in platelets. Activation of thromboplastin production is the main cause of increase in blood coagulation in patients with AH and AO.

Acetaldehyde production and metabolism by human indigenous and probiotic Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains.

Many human gastrointestinal facultative anaerobic and aerobic bacteria possess alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) activity and are therefore capable of oxidizing ethanol to acetaldehyde. We examined whether human gastrointestinal lactobacilli (three strains), bifidobacteria (five strains) and probiotic Lactobacillus GG ATCC 53103 are also able to metabolize ethanol and acetaldehyde in vitro. Acetaldehyde production by bacterial suspensions was determined by gas chromatography after a 1-h incubation with 22 mM ethanol.

Ciprofloxacin administration decreases enhanced ethanol elimination in ethanol-fed rats.

Many colonic aerobic bacteria possess alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) activity and are capable of oxidizing ethanol to acetaldehyde. Accordingly, some ingested ethanol can be metabolized in the colon in vivo via the bacteriocolonic pathway for ethanol oxidation. By diminishing the amount of aerobic colonic bacteria with ciprofloxacin treatment, we recently showed that the bacteriocolonic pathway may contribute up to 9% of total ethanol elimination in naive rats.

High blood endotoxin does not affect ethanol elimination in rats.

Gut-derived endotoxins have been proposed as mediators of the enhancement of ethanol elimination after chronic alcohol administration. We investigated whether chronically elevated blood-endotoxin levels affect the rate of ethanol elimination in a study where endotoxin was administered chronically from an osmotic minipump to rats fed ethanol in a liquid diet. As expected, an acute dose of ethanol (1.