Publications by authors named "Urban Ungerstedt"

Article Synopsis
  • The microdialysis technique, initially used for monitoring neurotransmitters in animals, has expanded to clinical applications, analyzing various biochemical substances relevant to cerebral energy metabolism.
  • This review emphasizes the differences between microdialysis and traditional animal studies, noting that microdialysis measures interstitial fluid near the probe rather than homogenized brain tissue.
  • Key findings during microdialysis include the importance of glucose, lactate, and pyruvate levels, and their ratios, especially in conditions like cerebral ischemia and mitochondrial dysfunction, highlighting their significance in evaluating brain energy status in clinical settings.
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Background: The study focuses on three questions related to the clinical usefulness of microdialysis in severe brain trauma: (1) How frequently is disturbed cerebral energy metabolism observed in various types of lesions? (2) How often does the biochemical pattern indicate cerebral ischaemia and mitochondrial dysfunction? (3) How do these patterns relate to mortality?

Method: The study includes 213 consecutive patients with severe brain trauma (342 intracerebral microdialysis catheters). The patients were classified into four groups according to the type of lesion: extradural haematoma (EDH), acute subdural haematoma (SDH), cerebral haemorrhagic contusion (CHC) and no mass lesion (NML). Altogether about 150,000 biochemical analyses were performed during the initial 96 h after trauma.

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Microdialysis enables the chemistry of the extracellular interstitial space to be monitored. Use of this technique in patients with acute brain injury has increased our understanding of the pathophysiology of several acute neurological disorders. In 2004, a consensus document on the clinical application of cerebral microdialysis was published.

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an important cause of death and disability. Safety and pharmacodynamics of 4-amino-tetrahydrobiopterin (VAS203), a nitric oxide (NO)-synthase inhibitor, were assessed in TBI in an exploratory Phase IIa study (NOSynthase Inhibition in TRAumatic brain injury=NOSTRA). The study included 32 patients with TBI in six European centers.

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Article Synopsis
  • Modulating ventilatory settings, specifically altering oxygen and ventilation levels, may help treat secondary brain damage in traumatic brain injury (TBI) cases.
  • In a study with pigs, those exposed to 100% hyperoxia combined with a 50% decrease in minute volume showed significant improvements in brain oxygenation and reduced lactate levels.
  • However, the combination of 100% hyperoxia with a 20% decrease in minute volume resulted in increased intracranial pressure, indicating that careful adjustment of these settings is necessary for effective treatment.
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Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the effect of red blood cell (RBC) transfusion on microdialysis-assessed interstitial fluid metabolic parameters in septic patients.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of 37 patients with severe sepsis/septic shock requiring transfusion of one to two RBC units. Interstitial fluid metabolic alterations were monitored by a microdialysis catheter inserted in the subcutaneous adipose tissue.

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Purpose: More than a disorder of macrocirculation, sepsis is a disease affecting the microcirculation and the tissue metabolism. In vivo microdialysis (MD) is a bedside technique that can monitor tissue metabolic changes. We conducted this study aiming (1) to assess whether patients at different sepsis stages present with different MD-assessed tissue metabolic profiles and (2) to determine if different underlying types of infections and implicated pathogens are associated with dissimilar metabolic alterations.

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Microdialysis (MD) provides the opportunity to monitor tissue metabolic changes. This study aimed to describe the kinetics of MD-derived metabolites during the course of critical sepsis, to assess whether these metabolites are useful in grading sepsis severity, and to investigate their prognostic use. To this end, 54 mechanically ventilated septic patients were prospectively studied, out of which 39 had shock.

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Objective: The very presence of an implanted sensor (a foreign body) causes changes in the adjacent tissue that may alter the analytes being sensed. The objective of this study was to investigate changes in glucose availability and local tissue metabolism at the sensor-tissue interface in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).

Method: Microdialysis was used to model implanted sensors.

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The detailed anatomy of the monoamine pathways of the rat by the students of Nils-Ake Hillarp provided the basis for a neurocircuitry targeting pharmacology. Further progress was achieved by the introduction of 6-hydroxydopamine as a tool for performing specific lesions, leading to the first stereotaxic mapping of the monoamine pathways in the rat brain by Urban Ungerstedt at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Unilateral intracerebral injections with 6-hydroxydopamine led to the proposal of 'Rotational Behaviour', as a classical model for screening drugs useful for alleviating Parkinson's disease and other neuropathologies.

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Objective: The purpose of this experimental study was to elucidate alterations in fetal energy metabolism in relation to ECG changes during extreme fetal asphyxia, postnatal resuscitation and the immediate post-resuscitatory phase.

Study Design: Five near-term fetal sheep were subjected to umbilical cord occlusion until cardiac arrest followed by delivery, resuscitation and postnatal pressure-controlled ventilation. Four sheep served as sham controls and were delivered immediately after ligation of the umbilical cord.

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Early detection of vascular complications following liver surgery is crucial. In the present study, intrahepatic microdialysis was used for continuous monitoring of porcine liver metabolism during occlusion of either the portal vein or the hepatic artery. Our aim was to assess whether microdialysis can be used to detect impaired vascular inflow by metabolic changes in the liver.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the effects of intravenous glutamine supplementation in head trauma patients, specifically looking at how it impacts glutamine and glutamate levels in the brain and body.
  • Results show that while glutamine is released from both the brain and legs, glutamate levels remained unchanged, indicating no net uptake across the brain.
  • The findings suggest that even with low plasma glutamine concentrations, the body's natural production remains normal, paving the way for future clinical trials on glutamine supplementation in head trauma patients.
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Many decisions in drug development and medical practice are based on measuring blood concentrations of endogenous and exogenous molecules. Yet most biochemical and pharmacological events take place in the tissues. Also, most drugs with few notable exceptions exert their effects not within the bloodstream, but in defined target tissues into which drugs have to distribute from the central compartment.

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Objective: Opinions vary regarding the indications for surgical evacuation of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhages (ICH) and whether or not penumbra zones surround them.

Methods: We performed intracerebral microdialysis (mean duration, 3.5 d) after surgical evacuation of ICH in 22 patients.

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Metabolic surveillance of the myocardium is of great interest in cardiac surgery. Microdialysis allows sampling of chemical substances from the interstitial fluid for immediate analysis. The two objectives of this study were to develop a technique for simple and safe implantation of a commercially available microdialysis probe (CMA-70) into the myocardium and to obtain reference data for further use and metabolic control.

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Objectives: To study the metabolic effects in vivo of L-2, 4 diaminobutyric acid (DAB) administered by retrograde microdialysis in glioblastoma and to evaluate the feasibility of the technique.

Methods: In 10 patients with glioblastoma, a stereotactic biopsy was performed followed by implantation of microdialysis catheters. One or two catheters were implanted in tumor tissue and two reference catheters were implanted in normal brain tissue and subcutaneous abdominal tissue, respectively.

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A novel method is described to follow known and unknown compounds in biological processes using microdialysis sampling and mass spectrometric detection. By implementation of internal standard, desalting/enrichment for the sample work-up, and multivariate data analysis, this methodology is a basis for future applications in early diagnosis of diseases and organ damage, as a complement to the routinely used clinical methods for biological samples. The present study includes screening without specific target analytes, of samples collected by microdialysis from liver of anaesthetized rats before and after local damage to this organ.

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The ketogenic diet (KD) is an established treatment for medically refractory pediatric epilepsy. Its anticonvulsant mechanism is still unclear. We examined the influence of the KD on the CSF levels of excitatory and inhibitory amino acids in 26 children (mean age 6.

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Object: Intracerebral microdialysis has attracted increasing interest as a monitoring technique during neurological/neurosurgical intensive care. The purpose of this study was to compare cerebral energy metabolism, an indicator of secondary excitotoxic injury and cell membrane degradation close to focal traumatic lesions ("penumbra zones") and in remote and apparently intact brain regions of the ipsilateral and contralateral hemispheres.

Methods: The study included 22 consecutive patients with a mean age 44 +/- 17 years and an estimated postresuscitation Glasgow Coma Scale motor score less than 5.

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Background: Microdialysis is used in many European neurointensive care units to monitor brain chemistry in patients suffering subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) or traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Discussion: We present a consensus agreement achieved at a meeting in Stockholm by a group of experienced users of microdialysis in neurointensive care, defining the use of microdialysis, placement of catheters, unreliable values, chemical markers, and clinical use in SAH and in TBI.

Conclusions: As microdialysis is maturing into a clinically useful technique for early detection of cerebral ischemia and secondary brain damage, there is a need to following such definition regarding when and how to use microdialysis after SAH and TBI.

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Microdialysis is a technique for sampling the chemistry of the interstitial fluid of tissues and organs in animal and man. It is minimally invasive and simple to perform in a clinical setting. Although microdialysis samples essentially all small molecular substances present in the interstitial fluid the use of microdialysis in neurointensive care has focused on markers of ischemia and cell damage.

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Aims: In experimental studies, morphine pharmacokinetics is different in the brain compared with other tissues due to the properties of the blood-brain barrier, including action of efflux pumps. It was hypothesized in this clinical study that active efflux of morphine occurs also in human brain, and that brain injury would alter cerebral morphine pharmacokinetics.

Methods: Patients with traumatic brain injury, equipped with one to three microdialysis catheters in the brain and one in abdominal subcutaneous fat for metabolic monitoring, were studied.

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Purpose: Microdialysis allows the biochemical analysis of interstitial fluids of nearly every organ as a bedside procedure. This technique could be useful to reveal data about the myocardial metabolism during cardiopulmonary bypass in human coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.

Methods: In 17 patients undergoing CABG a myocardial microdialysis catheter (CMA 70, CMA/Microdialysis AB, Sweden) was inserted in the apical region of the beating heart.

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