The effect of yoga exercise therapy on metabolic activity and oxidative stress indicators in non-insulin dependent diabets mellitus (NIDDM) patients [abstract]

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effort of yoga traditional exercises on indicators of oxidative damage and on anti-oxidative enzyme system in patients with NIDDM. METHODS: Ninety-four NIDDM volunteers were divided randomly into two groups: traditional and yoga exercise (female to male 5:1, age 50 to 70 yeras, with 2-5 years of duration of diabetes and without clinical complications). Both groups twice weekly for six months with similar nutritional support. Blood samples were taken at the beginning, and six months following exercise treatments and the following were determined: glycaemia by glucose oxidase (automatic analyser), microalbuminuria by semiquantative methods, creatinine by kinetic method, malondialdehyde (MDA) by products of thiobarbituricacid, superoxide dismutase (SOD) by kinetic method - the inhibition of pyrogallol, phospholipase A2 by colorimetry, protein oxidation (POX) by the method of Reznicky and Pucker. RESULTS: There was a reduction of glycaemia in the yoga group after 6 months (8.84 vs 8.35 mmol/l), while there was an increase in the traditional group 8.74 vs 9.51 mmol/l). The concentration of creatinine and microalbumin decreased in both groups notably in the yoga group. (AU)

Supply chain management: new paradigms for customers and suppliers.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to increase their effectiveness and improve their bottom lines. One area of renewed interest is supply chain management. By managing their supply chains better, companies are able to become more flexible, offer defect-free products, eliminate unnecessary delays, and keep costs down. This article briefly describes the objectives of supply chain management and lists some of the tools that can be used to achieve them.

Security in hospital information systems.

The paper links the previous and proposed activities of IMIA WG4 with the developments of IMIA WG10. The fading systems boundaries, increasing and integrated functionality together with the increasing use of information within HIS to care for patients raises the questions of whether HIS should be treated as 'safety critical' systems or medical devices and tested appropriately. These considerations immediately lead to the need to establish appropriate security standards for HIS.

Neurobehavioral sequelae of cranial irradiation in adults: a review of radiation-induced encephalopathy.

PURPOSE: To examine behavioral dimensions of treatment outcomes for patients receiving cranial irradiation. Radiation encephalopathy is one of these and refers to significant cognitive and emotional dysfunction following radiation therapy to the brain. Issues of definition, estimated incidence, pathophysiologic mechanisms, and recommended research designs are reviewed in relationship to functional neurobehavioral outcomes. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Twenty-nine studies of adults receiving therapeutic cranial irradiation (TCI) involving 748 patients and 18 studies of prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) involving 368 patients are reviewed. Assessment of patient outcomes are summarized for research published since 1980, with specific attention to adverse changes in cognitive and emotional functioning. RESULTS: Analyses revealed that 213 TCI patients and 100 PCI patients showed encephalopathy attributed to radiation. Manifestations of the late delayed effects of radiotherapy on brain function are related to patient age, total dose of irradiation, fraction sizes, and timing of chemotherapy. Radiation encephalopathy appears to be more common than the pathologic tissue injury of radiation necrosis. Accurate diagnosis of these neurobehavioral sequelae can require follow-up over a period of years with sensitive assessment procedures. CONCLUSIONS: It is likely that the true incidence of treatment-related side effects of cranial irradiation in adults who survive more than 6 months without brain tumor growth or recurrence has been significantly underestimated. Research designs that include formal neuropsychologic assessment in conjunction with other neurodiagnostic tests can provide more comprehensive evaluation of long-term neurobehavioral outcomes.

Use of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis to measure X-ray-induced double-strand breaks in DNA substituted with BrdU.

The substitution of BrdU for TdR in the DNA of Chinese hamster ovary cells caused radiosensitization for both cell killing and an increase in the rate of neutral elution of the DNA. However, no radiosensitization was observed for the amount of DNA that migrated from the plug of agarose gels subjected to pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. An unexpected observation, however, was that the migration rate of BrdU-substituted DNA was relatively independent of radiation dose and was much less than that of unsubstituted DNA which migrated at a faster rate as the radiation dose increased. This difference in migration between TdR- and BrdU-labeled DNA was observed only when electrophoresis conditions were optimized for separating DNA molecules from 1 to 7 Mb. Possibly, the increase in negative charge on BrdU-labeled DNA increases the reorientation time during each pulse, with a resulting decrease in rate of migration, or radiation effects on BrdU-labeled DNA may be responsible for the decrease in migration rate.