Bongkrekic acid poisoning: Severe liver function damage combined with multiple organ failure caused by eating spoiled food.

Bongkrekic acid (BA) poisoning can be caused by eating spoiled or fermented foods contaminated with pseudomonas cocovenenans. Although some in vitro studies have been reported on the use of purified BA to interfere with cell metabolism, few clinical or pathological data of BA poisoning on human due to food-borne factors are available for forensic appraisal. For the first time, we retrospectively report five cases of food-borne poisoning caused by eating rice noodles, a popular traditional food in Guangdong, China, and three of the victims died. All five victims were hospitalized with gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea and were treated with admission diagnosis of liver failure and acute kidney damage. Certain concentrations of BA were detected in the victims' peripheral blood serums at the hospitalization (ranging from 70-345 µg/L) and the suspected poisonous foods (0-810 ng/g) with LC-MS/MS technique. The results of forensic pathological examination showed that all three deceased had severe liver and kidney damage, accompanied by multiple organ congestion and edema, which were consistent with clinical diagnosis. Combined with the clinical records, we found that the difference in blood glucose between the deceased and survivors of the five victims may be an indication of the severity of the disease. In addition, we compared BA poisoning with other diseases that can cause acute liver function damage in terms of pathological characteristics and clinical manifestations, which has important reference significance for the diagnosis and forensic appraisal of this food-borne poisoning.

Mitochondrial DNA 4977 bp deletion is a common phenomenon in hair and increases with age.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is believed to be particularly susceptible to oxidative damage during aging, resulting in mtDNA point mutations, duplications, and deletions. Although mtDNA deletions have been reported in various human tissues, e.g., the brain, heart, and skeletal muscle, little is known about the occurrence in hair. Therefore, we screened for the presence of mtDNA 13162 bp, 10422 bp, 7663 bp, 7436 bp, 4989 bp, and 4977 bp deletions in 90 hair samples from subjects aged 5 days to 91 years by using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and investigated the deletion load by TaqMan probe-based real-time PCR. We detected the mtDNA 4977 bp deletion in hair samples, but none of the other deletions that were screened for. The proportion of mtDNA 4977 deletion carriers was 98.3% (89/90) and the deletion loads increased from 0 to 1.436 ± 0.2086% of the total mtDNA with an exponential increase with age (r = 0.677, p < 0.05). These results suggest that mtDNA 4977 bp deletion is a common phenomenon in hair and increases with age. These findings expand our understanding of the tissue-specific distribution of mtDNA deletions.

[Improved method of acute myocardial ischemic rat model].

OBJECTIVE: To improve the successful rate of operation and the livability in establishing acute myocardial ischemic rat model. METHODS: The successful rate of animal experiment is compared between traditional method and improved method. RESULTS: The successful rate of improved method was 90%, which was much higher than 30% in successful rate of traditional method. CONCLUSION: The improved method may reduce the difficulty of operation remarkably and cut down the experiment expenditure, which is superior to traditional method.