Kinetics and residues after intraperitoneal procaine penicillin G administration in lactating dairy cows.

This paper describes the pharmacokinetic profile of procaine penicillin G after intraperitoneal (IP) administration in eight lactating dairy cows. Procaine pencillin G (PPG, 21 000 IU/kg) was deposited into the abdominal cavity of each cow following an incision in the right paralumbar fossa. Blood and milk samples were taken over the following 10 days, at which point the cows were euthanized. Plasma, milk, muscle, liver, and kidney penicillin concentrations were determined by HPLC, with a limit of quantification of 5 ng/mL for plasma and milk and 40 ng/g for tissue samples. A noncompartmental method was used to analyze plasma kinetics. The mean pharmacokinetic parameters (+/-SD) were: C(max), 5.5 +/- 2.6 microg/mL; T(max), 0.75 +/- 0.27 h; AUC(0-infinity), 10.8 +/- 4.9 microg x h/mL; MRT, 2.2 +/- 0.9 h. All milk from treated cows contained detectable penicillin residues for a minimum of three milkings (31 h) and maximum of five milkings (52 h) after administration. Concentrations of penicillin in all muscle, liver, and kidney samples taken 10 days postadministration were below the limit of quantification. Necropsy examinations revealed foci of hemorrhage on the rumenal omentum of most cows but peritonitis was not observed. Systemic inflammation as determined by change in leukogram or plasma fibrinogen was noted in one cow. The results of this study demonstrate that IP PPG is absorbed and eliminated rapidly in lactating dairy cows.

Absence of interhemispheric transfer of unilateral visuomotor learning in young children and individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum.

This study was undertaken to investigate the role of the corpus callosum in interhemispheric transfer of unilateral visuomotor learning. In the first experiment, the cross-manual performance of 4 callosal agenesis participants was compared to that of 4 age- and IQ-matched controls. In the second experiment, normal children of different ages (6-7 and 11-12 years) and adults were submitted to the same task to assess the impact of callosal maturation on interhemispheric transfer. Participants had to make aiming movements from a starting position toward either a central or a lateral target on the same side as the hand used, while maintaining central fixation. Prior to training, a pretest was performed with the hand contralateral to the hand used during learning. Participants were then submitted to a posttest with the untrained hand. All participants learned the unilateral aiming task in the learning phase, as evidenced by a reduction in spatial errors with an increasing number of practice trials. However, acallosal participants and children aged 6 to 7 years failed to transfer the acquired skill from the trained to the untrained hemisphere. These findings suggest that interhemispheric transfer of visuomotor skills cannot be assumed by other structures in the case of agenesis or morphological immaturity of the corpus callosum. The results further indicate that unilateral visuomotor learning leads to the formation of a single, unihemispheric engram in the absence, whether functional or anatomical, of the corpus callosum.

Absence of disconnexion syndrome in callosal agenesis and early callosotomy: brain reorganization or lack of structural specificity during ontogeny?

Four acallosal subjects, one child, aged 5, and three adults, as well as five epileptic patients who underwent callosotomy between the ages of 6-21 years, were tested on a variety of intra- and intermanual tasks in a study aimed at elucidating the developmental aspects of callosal plasticity. The performance of the clinical sample was compared to that of 48 normal children, aged 5-12 years, an age span generally considered to coincide with the final stages of callosal maturation. As previously reported, interhemispheric integration improved with increasing age in the normal sample. The two patients having undergone callosotomy in childhood performed as well as their normal peers, whereas the three others who had the operation in late adolescence or adulthood showed the typical disconnexion deficits reported in the literature. The acallosal subjects, including the youngest one, outperformed all groups. We speculate that the remarkable plasticity seen in the acallosals and the young callosotomized patients may be related to a critical period in development coinciding with a phase of synaptic overproduction and redundancy that would favor the reinforcement of alternative neural pathways. The compensatory mechanisms appear to become more limited in late adolescence when synaptic distribution presumably assumes adult patterns.