The role of gastric pepsin in the inflammatory cascade of pediatric otitis media.

Importance: Otitis media is characterized as an ongoing inflammation with accumulation of an effusion in the middle ear cleft. The molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis, particularly the inflammatory response, remain largely unknown. We hypothesize that aspiration of gastric contents into the nasopharynx may be responsible for the initiation of the inflammatory process or aggravate a preexisting condition.

An automated method for the determination of intestinal disaccharidase and glucoamylase activities.

Determination of disaccharidase and glucoamylase activities is important for the diagnosis of intestinal diseases. We adapted a widely accepted manual method to an automated system that uses the same reagents reaction volumes, incubation times, and biopsy size as the manual method. A dye was added to the homogenates as the internal quality control to monitor the pipetting precision of the automated system.