National variation in guidance for the management of pregnant women presenting with major trauma.

INTRODUCTION: The initial assessment of pregnant women presenting with significant injuries is more complicated than that of non-pregnant women because of physiological and anatomical changes, and the presence of the fetus. The aim of this study was to determine whether guidelines for the early management of severely injured pregnant women exist, which aspects of assessment/management they cover and to what extent there is national consistency. METHODS: A freedom of information request was submitted to 125 acute National Health Service trusts in England and six in Wales. The trusts were asked to confirm whether they have a guideline for the management of major trauma in pregnant women presenting to the emergency department and what the guidelines were. RESULTS: In total, 96.2% of trusts responded, of which 19% have a specific guideline and 7.9% have a generic guideline for assessing pregnant women in the emergency department, irrespective of injury severity. Of the responding trusts, 19.8% have a protocol that specifies when an obstetric trauma call should be put out by the emergency department and when a pregnant woman should be transferred to a major trauma centre for definitive management. Our results found that 69.8% routinely call obstetrics or gynaecology to the trauma call compared with 36.5% calling paediatrics. CONCLUSIONS: The heterogeneity evident across trusts necessitates the establishment of national guidelines for the assessment of pregnant women with major trauma to standardise communication and delivery of care.

An ordered comparative map of the cattle and human genomes.

A cattle-human whole-genome comparative map was constructed using parallel radiation hybrid (RH) mapping in conjunction with EST sequencing, database mining for unmapped cattle genes, and a predictive bioinformatics approach (COMPASS) for targeting specific homologous regions. A total of 768 genes were placed on the RH map in addition to 319 microsatellites used as anchor markers. Of these, 638 had human orthologs with mapping data, thus permitting construction of an ordered comparative map. The large number of ordered loci revealed > or =105 conserved segments between the two genomes. The comparative map suggests that 41 translocation events, a minimum of 54 internal rearrangements, and repositioning of all but one centromere can account for the observed organizations of the cattle and human genomes. In addition, the COMPASS in silico mapping tool was shown to be 95% accurate in its ability to predict cattle chromosome location from random sequence data, demonstrating this tool to be valuable for efficient targeting of specific regions for detailed mapping. The comparative map generated will be a cornerstone for elucidating mammalian chromosome phylogeny and the identification of genes of agricultural importance."Ought we, for instance, to begin by discussing each separate species-in virtue of some common element of their nature, and proceed from this as a basis for the consideration of them separately?" from Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, 350 B.C.E.

Compass of 47,787 cattle ESTs.

Comparative Mapping by Annotation and Sequence Similarity (COMPASS) has been demonstrated to be an effective approach for predicting the chromosome location of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and other sequence-based markers on the basis of comparative mapping information. Herein, we describe the development and use of a computer program to execute the COMPASS strategy en masse. The program was used to identify orthologs and predict map locations of 47,787 cattle ESTs. Among these 47,787 ESTs, 30,097 had significant matches with sequences in the human UniGene database and 21,311 were annotated with human GB4 radiation hybrid mapping data. These sequences are contained within 9,956 and 6,295 individual human UniGene clusters, respectively. The putative human orthologs and predicted cattle chromosome locations of the 21,311 cattle ESTs with GB4 mapping data are provided in this report as a resource for the research community.

Porcine sperm surface beta1,4galactosyltransferase binds to the zona pellucida but is not necessary or sufficient to mediate sperm-zona pellucida binding.

The binding of sperm to the zona pellucida is an integral part of the mammalian fertilization process, investigated most extensively in the mouse. Several sperm receptors for the murine zona pellucida have been studied (Snell WJ, White JM. 1996. Cell 85:629-637; Wassarman PM. 1999. Cell 96:175-183), but the most compelling evidence exists for beta-1,4-galactosyltransferase (GalTase). Considering that GalTase is present on the surface of porcine sperm (Larson JL, Miller DJ. 1997. Biol Reprod 57:442-453), we investigated the role of GalTase in porcine sperm-zona binding. Sperm surface GalTase catalyzed the addition of uridine diphosphate-[(3)H]galactose to the 55 kDa group of the porcine zona pellucida proteins implicated in sperm binding, demonstrating that GalTase binds the porcine zona. The functional importance of GalTase-zona pellucida binding was tested. Addition of uridine diphosphate galactose, a substrate that completes the GalTase enzymatic reaction and disrupts GalTase mediated adhesion, had no effect on binding of sperm to porcine oocytes. Furthermore, removal of the GalTase zona ligand by incubation of oocytes with N-acetylglucosaminidase had no effect on binding of sperm to oocytes. These results suggest that GalTase is not necessary for sperm to bind to the zona pellucida. Digestion of isolated porcine zona proteins with N-acetylglucosaminidase did not affect the biological activity of soluble porcine zona proteins in competitive sperm-zona binding assays, suggesting that GalTase alone is not sufficient to mediate sperm-zona attachment. From these results, it appears that, although GalTase is able to bind porcine zona proteins, its function in porcine sperm-zona binding is not necessary or sufficient for sperm-zona binding. This supports the contention that porcine sperm-zona binding requires redundant gamete receptors.