Ascitic fluid adenosine deaminase insensitivity in detecting tuberculous peritonitis in the United States.

Tuberculous peritonitis, although common in Third World countries, remains an uncommon cause of ascites in the United States. Ascitic fluid adenosine deaminase (ADA) activity has been proposed as a useful diagnostic test. The aim of this retrospective study was to determine the clinical utility of ascitic fluid ADA activity in diagnosing tuberculous peritonitis in a U.

Serum catalase as marker of graft-vs-host disease in allogeneic bone marrow transplant recipients: pilot study.

We evaluated the efficacies of serum catalase (CAT), 5'-nucleotidase (5'NT), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF) as diagnostic markers of acute graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) in 28 allogeneic bone marrow transplant recipients by comparing their abilities to discriminate between GVHD-related and non-GVHD-related complications. Mean peak serum CAT concentrations for patients with GVHD-related complications (n = 17) were about fivefold higher than concentrations in patients with non-GVHD-related complications (n = 25; P = 0.003), whereas the mean peak concentrations of serum 5'NT and TNF were not substantially different.

Effect of food intake on the activity of liver enzymes in partially hepatectomized rats treated with tumor necrosis factor.

After partial hepatectomy (PHx), there are significant changes in the activity of a number of enzymes in the regenerating rat liver. Administration of low doses of recombinant human tumor necrosis factor-alpha (rHu-TNF) to normal rats induces similar changes in some of the enzymes but not in others. Because certain observations suggest that TNF may play a dominant role in liver regeneration, we speculated that the discrepancies in enzyme activities may be due to the decrease in food intake caused by PHx.

Hepatic mitochondrial enzyme activity and serum amino acid composition in rats treated with tumor necrosis factor.

The biochemical integrity of hepatocellular mitochondria was investigated in rats treated with small doses of human recombinant tumor necrosis factor-alpha (Hur-TNF;50-100 micrograms/kg/d injected intraperitoneally for 5 d) by measuring the activities of three mitochondrial enzymes, glutamate dehydrogenase, succinate dehydrogenase and malate dehydrogenase. The activity of glutamate dehydrogenase (a mitochondrial matrix enzyme) was 20% to 34% lower than that of control rats (P = 0.02 to 0.

Ultradian-infradian variation of cardiac creatine phosphokinase (CPK) activity in male Holtzman rats.

Reference standards were sought for use in the search of any indications of myocardial damage by an alteration of the time structure, or chronome, of creatine phosphokinase (CPK) "MB" isoenzyme activity in the heart of the male Holtzman rat. 144 rats were kept on 6 lighting regimens staggered by 4 hours, 24 rats per chamber. On 8 consecutive days, hearts from 3 animals from each chamber were harvested and weighed.