Surgical outcome of male patients with chronic central nervous system disorders and voiding dysfunction due to bladder outlet obstruction.

PURPOSE: Voiding dysfunction is common in patients with chronic central nervous system (CNS) diseases and has great impact on quality of life. Patients with chronic CNS disorders might have concomitant detrusor overactivity, detrusor underactivity, and voiding dysfunction. Although bladder outlet surgeries could relieve bladder outlet obstruction (BOO), patients might have persistent or exacerbated storage symptoms. This study investigated surgical outcome of patients with chronic CNS disorders after bladder outlet surgery. METHODS: A total of 63 male patients with cerebrovascular accident (CVA, n = 44), Parkinson's disease (PD, n = 11), and early-stage dementia (n = 8), had received bladder outlet surgery after videourodynamic proven BOO refractory to medical treatment. The preoperative and postoperative lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and uroflowmetry parameters were assessed. If the storage symptom subscore decreased or increased by 1, the outcome was considered improved or exacerbated after treatment. When patients had improvement in maximum flow rate (Qmax) and voiding efficiency (VE) and decreased voiding symptom subscore, they were considered having improvement of voiding dysfunction. RESULTS: The mean age was 71.1 ± 9.8 years and mean duration from diagnosis of BOO to surgical intervention was 15.1 ± 25.0 months. Overall, there was significant improvement in voiding LUTS and urinary retention after surgery. The post-void residual volume (PVR), corrected Qmax (cQmax), and VE significantly improved after surgery. In subgroup analysis, although voiding symptoms improved in CVA patients, urgency and exacerbated urgency incontinence persisted after surgery. In PD patients, there was improvement in voiding condition such as PVR, cQmax and VE, but the storage symptoms did not change after surgery. Patients with dementia had no improvement both in storage and voiding symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Bladder outlet surgeries are effective to relieve voiding dysfunction in patients with CVA and PD, but have little effect on storage LUTS in patients with chronic brain lesions.

Zebrafish HSC70 promoter to express carp muscle-specific creatine kinase for acclimation under cold condition.

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is used as a model system for in vivo studies. To expand the research scope of physical, biochemical and physiological studies, a cold-tolerant model of zebrafish was developed. The common carp (Cyprinus carpio) muscle form of creatine kinase (CK, EC 2.7.3.2) can maintain enzymatic activity at a temperature of around 15°C. However, a cold-inducible promoter of zebrafish, hsc 70 (heat shock protein 70 cognate), is able to increase the expression of gene product by 9.8 fold at a temperature of 16°C. Therefore, the carp CK gene was promoted by hsc 70 and transfected into zebrafish embryos. Resulting transgenic zebrafish survived and could maintain its swimming behavior at 13°C, which was not possible with the wild-type zebrafish. The swimming distance of the transgenic fish was 42% greater than that of the wild type at 13°C. This new transgenic fish model is ideal for studies of ectothermal vertebrates in low-temperature environments.

An Actinobacterial Isolate, Streptomyces sp. YX44, Produces Broad-Spectrum Antibiotics That Strongly Inhibit Staphylococcus aureus.

The need for new antibiotics is increasing due to their overuse, and antibiotic resistance has become one of the major threats worldwide to public health, food safety, and clinical treatment. In this study, we describe an actinobacterial isolate, YX44, which belongs to the genus Streptomyces. This Streptomyces was isolated from a drinking pipe located in Osaka, Japan, and has the ability to inhibit Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria, and various fungi. YX44 fermentation broth shows strong activity against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, as well as also inhibiting clinical isolates of multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The YX44 antibacterial substances in the broth are relatively heat-stable, show high stability from the pH range 1 to 11, and have good solubility in both organic and non-organic solvents. Size-exclusion chromatography revealed that the YX44 antibacterial compounds are less than 1000 Da in size. LC-MS was able to identify three possible candidate molecules with molecular weights of 308, 365, 460, and 653 g/mol; none of these sizes correspond to any well-known antibiotics. Our results show that Streptomyces sp. YX44 seems to produce a number of novel antibiotics with high pH stability and good solubility that have significant activity against S. aureus, including multidrug-resistant strains.