Overnight deprivation from smoking disrupts amygdala responses to fear

Cigarette smoking, a major, yet avoidable, cause of disability and premature death, is the most prevalent form of nicotine addiction. An emerging theme in the neurobiology of nicotine addiction is the integrity of the amygdala. Using functional MRI, amygdala responses during a face perception task were compared between 28 chronic smokers [14 females, 14 males; age, 26.3 (2.8) years; age at onset of smoking, 15.8 (2.6) years; years smoked, 9.1 (2.1); cigarettes per day, 17.1 (3.7); Fagerström test for nicotine dependence score, 4.1 (1.9); exhaled carbon‐monoxide level, 17.8 (9.5) ppm] and 28 age‐ and education‐matched nonsmokers [14 females, 14 males; age, 26.9 (2.4) years]. Subjects underwent imaging on two separate occasions 1 week apart: smoking satiety versus overnight smoking deprivation, in a randomized counterbalanced order. Our results show no difference in amygdala responses to faces between nonsmokers and satiated smokers. However, overnight deprivation from smoking was associated with a significantly lowered amygdala response to fear, an effect that was probabilistically mapped to the basolateral amygdala. We suggest that aberrant amygdala reactivity in overnight‐deprived smokers may reflect a pre‐existing vulnerability to smoking and/or increase the risk of smoking relapse after a cessation attempt. Hum Brain Mapp, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Increased Number of Cerebellar Granule Cells and Astrocytes in the Internal Granule Layer in Sheep Following Prenatal Intra-amniotic Injection of Lipopolysaccharide

Chorioamnionitis is an important problem in perinatology today, leading to brain injury and neurological handicaps. However, there are almost no data available regarding chorioamnionitis and a specific damage of the cerebellum. Therefore, this study aimed at determining if chorioamnionitis causes cerebellar morphological alterations. Chorioamnionitis was induced in sheep by the intra-amniotic injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) at a gestational age (GA) of 110 days. At a GA of 140 days, we assessed the mean total and layer-specific volume and the mean total granule cell (GCs) and Purkinje cell (PC) number in the cerebelli of LPS-exposed and control animals using high-precision design-based stereology. Astrogliosis was assessed in the gray and white matter (WM) using a glial fibrillary acidic protein staining combined with gray value image analysis. The present study showed an unchanged volume of the total cerebellum as well as the molecular layer, outer and inner granular cell layers (OGL and IGL, respectively), and WM. Interestingly, compared with controls, the LPS-exposed brains showed a statistically significant increase (+20.4%) in the mean total number of GCs, whereas the number of PCs did not show any difference between the two groups. In addition, LPS-exposed animals showed signs of astrogliosis specifically affecting the IGL. Intra-amniotic injection of LPS causes morphological changes in the cerebellum of fetal sheep still detectable at full-term birth. In this study, changes were restricted to the inner granule layer. These cerebellar changes might correspond to some of the motor or non-motor deficits seen in neonates from compromised pregnancies.     

Diagnostic performance of ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in giant cell arteritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Purpose  

The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and perform a meta-analysis on the diagnostic performances of ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET) for giant cell arteritis (GCA), with or without polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR).     

Midterm Results of Uterine Artery Embolization Using Narrow-Size Calibrated Embozene Microspheres

Purpose  

To evaluate safety and efficacy of uterine artery embolization using narrow-size-range polyphosphazene-coated hydrogel microspheres (Embozene, CeloNova Biosciences, Newnan, GA).     

The treatment of older Hodgkin lymphoma patients

The outcome of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) has dramatically improved over the past decades and continues to improve with the development of novel targeted therapies, such as the immunoconjugate brentuximab vedotin and the checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab and pembrolizumab. Moreover, with the use of response-adapted strategies using positron-emission-tomography (PET), the overall intensity of treatment for most patients can be reduced, resulting in less acute and late toxicity. However, these advances are mainly restricted to younger patients, as advances in patients above the age of 60 years (‘older’ patients) have been much less pronounced. Furthermore, about one third of all HL patients are among the older population, but only 5–10% of the patients treated in current HL clinical trials are ≥60 years old. HL in older patients is characterized by aggressive disease and unfavourable prognostic features as B symptoms and predominance of advanced stages. In addition, tolerance to curative chemotherapy is drastically reduced in older patients resulting in excessive toxicity and insufficient treatment due to therapy delays and dose reductions. Therefore, there is a significant unmet medical need in older HL patients for less toxic and effective therapies, and an important gap of knowledge concerning this growing population of patients. Recent advances on epidemiology, characteristics and treatment of older HL patients will be summarized in this article.     

Liver methylene fraction by dual- and triple-echo gradient-echo imaging at 3.0T: Correlation with proton MR spectroscopy and estimation of robustness after SPIO administration

Purpose

To assess the systematic errors in liver methylene fraction (LMF) resulting from fat–fat interference effects with dual‐ and triple‐echo gradient‐recalled‐echo Dual/Triple GRE) sequences and to test the robustness of these sequences after iron overloading.

Materials and Methods

Forty type‐2 diabetic patients underwent LMF measurement by 3.0T ¹H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (corrected for T1 and T2 decays) as the reference standard and liver fat fraction (%Fat) measurement by four Dual/Triple GRE sequences with 20° and 60° flip angle (α), corrected for T1 recovery. The same four sequences were repeated in eight patients after ferumoxide injection. Corrections for systematic errors were determined from the linear regressions (spectroscopy LMF values over Dual/Triple GRE %Fat values). Robustness was tested using Wilcoxon's signed‐rank test.

Results

Fat–fat interference effects produced a ～10% relative systematic error and T2* decay produced a 1.9%–4.2% absolute systematic error in LMF. When comparing before and after ferumoxide, dual‐echo imaging with α = 20° and α = 60°, even when corrected, showed absolute differences of 7.23% [2.81%–10.25%] (P = 0.0117) and 5.65% [1.89%–8.216.8%] (P = 0.0117), respectively; compared to only 1.17% [0.08%–2.83%] (P = 0.0251) and 1.15% [0.37%–2.73%] (P = 0.2626) with triple‐echo imaging and α = 20° and α = 60°, respectively.

Conclusion

Triple‐echo imaging with α = 60° corrected for both T1 recovery and fat–fat interference effects is robust after superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) administration and can reliably quantify LMF. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2011;33:119–127. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Topical gentamicin does not provide any additional anastomotic strength when combined with fibrin glue

Background

We evaluated the effect of a combination of fibrin sealant and topical gentamicin on a colonic anastomosis in a rat model.

Methods

Partial anastomosis in the transverse colon was performed in 70 male Sprague–Dawley rats aged 6 to 10 weeks using 5 interrupted sutures. The rats were divided into 4 groups (control, gentamicin, fibrin glue, and combination). On postoperative days 3 and 5, the rats in each group were killed, anastomotic bursting pressures scores and bowel loop adhesions were determined, and histologic examination was performed.

Results

No significant difference was noted in the bursting pressures, adhesions, inflammatory infiltrates, fibroblasts, or neoangiogenesis between the fibrin-glue only and the combination groups for both the day 3 and day 5 subgroups.

Conclusions

The combination of topical gentamicin and fibrin glue had little effect because the combination did not provide additional anastomotic strength or decrease the number of adhesions when compared with fibrin glue alone.