Assessing Dominant-Submissive Behavior in Adult Rats Following Traumatic Brain Injury.

Competition over resources such as food, territory, and mates significantly influences relationships within animal species and is mediated through social hierarchies that are often based on dominant-submissive relationships. The dominant-submissive relationship is a normal behavioral pattern among the individuals of a species. Traumatic brain injury is a frequent cause of social interaction impairment and the reorganization of dominant-submissive relationships in animal pairs. This protocol describes submissive behavior in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats after the induction of traumatic brain injury using a fluid-percussion model compared to naive rats through a series of dominant-submissive tests performed between 29 days and 33 days after induction. The dominant-submissive behavior test shows how brain injury can induce submissive behavior in animals competing for food. After traumatic brain injury, the rodents were more submissive, as indicated by them spending less time at the feeder and being less likely to arrive first at the trough compared to the control animals. According to this protocol, submissive behavior develops after traumatic brain injury in adult male rats.

Blood Glutamate Scavenging With Pyruvate as a Novel Preventative and Therapeutic Approach for Depressive-Like Behavior Following Traumatic Brain Injury in a Rat Model.

Depression is a common and serious complication following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Both depression and TBI have independently been associated with pathologically elevated extracellular brain glutamate levels. In the setting of TBI, blood glutamate scavenging with pyruvate has been widely shown as an effective method to provide neuroprotection by reducing blood glutamate and subsequent brain glutamate levels. Here we evaluate pyruvate as a novel approach in the treatment and prevention of post-TBI depression-like behavior in a rat model. Rats were divided into five groups: (1) sham-operated control with pyruvate, (2) sham-operated control with placebo, (3) post-TBI with placebo, (4) post-TBI given preventative pyruvate, and (5) post-TBI treated with pyruvate. These groups had an equal number of females and males. Rats were assessed for depressive-like behavior, neurological status, and glutamate levels in the blood and brain. Post-TBI neurological deficits with concurrent elevations in glutamate levels were demonstrated, with peak glutamate levels 24 h after TBI. Following TBI, the administration of either prophylactic or therapeutic pyruvate led to reduced glutamate levels, improved neurologic recovery, and improved depressive-like behavior. Glutamate scavenging with pyruvate may be an effective prophylactic and therapeutic option for post-TBI depression by reducing associated elevations in brain glutamate levels.

A Novel Histological Technique to Assess Severity of Traumatic Brain Injury in Rodents: Comparisons to Neuroimaging and Neurological Outcomes.

Here we evaluate an alternative protocol to histologically examine blood-brain barrier (BBB) breakdown, brain edema, and lesion volume following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the same set of rodent brain samples. We further compare this novel histological technique to measurements determined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a neurological severity score (NSS). Sixty-six rats were randomly assigned to a sham-operated, mild TBI, moderate TBI, or severe TBI group. 48 h after TBI, NSS, MRI and histological techniques were performed to measure TBI severity outcome. Both the histological and MRI techniques were able to detect measurements of severity outcome, but histologically determined outcomes were more sensitive. The two most sensitive techniques for determining the degree of injury following TBI were NSS and histologically determined BBB breakdown. Our results demonstrate that BBB breakdown, brain edema, and lesion volume following TBI can be accurately measured by histological evaluation of the same set of brain samples.

Clinical Outcomes of Critically Ill Patients Using Inhaled Nitric Oxide (iNO) during Intrahospital Transport.

Critically ill patients with severe hypoxemia are often treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) with inhaled nitric oxide (iNO). These patients are at higher risk when they require intrahospital transportation. In this study, we collected clinical and laboratory data from 221 patients who were hospitalized in the general ICU and treated with iNO at Soroka Medical Center, Israel, between January 2010 and December 2019. We retrospectively compared the 65 patients who received iNO during intrahospital transportation to the 156 patients who received iNO without transportation. Among critically ill patients who were transported while being administered iNO, only one patient had an adverse event (atrial fibrillation) on transport. We found that maximal iNO dosage during ICU stay, duration of mechanical ventilation, and percent of vasopressor support were the only independent risk factors for ICU mortality in both study groups. No difference in primary outcome of ICU mortality rate was found between the critically ill patients treated with iNO during intrahospital transportation and those who were treated with iNO but not transported during the ICU stay. We anticipate that this study will advise clinical decision-making in the ICU, especially when treating patients who are administered iNO.

Corrigendum to "Clinical Outcomes of Critically Ill Patients Using Inhaled Nitric Oxide (iNO) during Intrahospital Transport".

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1155/2021/6633210.].

Asynchronous replication of biallelically expressed loci: a new phenomenon in Turner syndrome.

PURPOSE: Transcriptional activity of genes is related to their replication timing; alleles showing the common biallelic mode of expression replicate synchronously, whereas those with a monoallelic mode of expression replicate asynchronously. Here the level of synchronization in replication timing of alleles was determined in subjects with Turner syndrome. METHODS: Fluorescence in situ hybridization was used for three loci not linked to X chromosome, in lymphocytes derived from 12 controls, 3 individuals with Turner, and 4 with mosaic Turner syndrome. RESULTS: In cells derived from controls, each pair of alleles replicated synchronously; yet these same alleles replicated asynchronously in cells monosomic for X chromosome derived from Turner and mosaic Turner patients. When the level of 45,X was low in the mosaic samples, the replication pattern of the 46,XX cells was normal. However, in samples with a high level of mosaicism, a significantly increased asynchronous replication was detected in the 46,XX cells. CONCLUSION: An altered temporal replication control in Turner syndrome affecting the aneuploid and euploid cells is shown. This alteration may potentially be involved in the determination of the syndrome.