SIDS and supine sleep

Bergman’s Integrated Mechanism Review explores how the supine sleep position reduces the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.

See Proposal for mechanisms of protection of supine sleep against sudden infant death syndrome: an integrated mechanism review

Fetal sheep spleen and inflammation

Kuypers and colleagues exposed fetal sheep to intra-amniotic lipopolysaccharide before delivery, at 125 days gestational age. They found that intrauterine inflammation induced a rapid and sustained splenic immune response with persistent changes in the cytokine profile.

See Responses of the spleen to intraamniotic lipopolysaccharide exposure in fetal sheep

Nicotine and kidney fibrosis

Chen and coinvestigators administered nicotine to pregnant Sprague–Dawley rats and subjected neonatal kidney tissues to histological analysis, collagen measurement, and western blot analysis. The results seemed to show that nicotine exposure during gestation and lactation induced neonatal kidney fibrosis.

See Maternal nicotine exposure during gestation and lactation induces kidney injury and fibrosis in rat offspring

Encephalopathy or febrile seizures?

Differentiating acute encephalopathy from febrile seizures is difficult. Asano et al. looked for an early diagnostic marker to enable appropriate early intervention. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was obtained from patients with acute encephalopathy, complex febrile seizures, or simple febrile seizures. Using pattern-recognition analysis of proton nuclear magnetic resonance data, they found differences in the patterns of CSF characteristics between the groups.

See Visualization of different characteristics of cerebrospinal fluid with acute encephalopathy and febrile seizures using pattern recognition analysis of 1H NMR

Brain injury in hypoglycemia

Ennis and coauthors subjected 3-week-old rats to insulin-induced hypoglycemia and treated them with either 10% or 50% dextrose. Neuronal injury, poly(ADP-ribose)polymerase-1, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor III/TrkB/p75NTR expressions were determined. In a second experiment, ketonemia was induced by administering β-hydroxybutyrate during hypoglycemia, and its effect on neuronal injury was compared with that in rats conventionally treated using 10% dextrose. Only ketonemia during hypoglycemia attenuated neuronal injury.

See Hyperglycemia accentuates and ketonemia attenuates hypoglycemia-induced neuronal injury in the developing rat brain