Role of taurine in spinal cord injury.

Taurine is a sulfur amino acid. It is found endogenously in human and several others tissues. It is significantly in high concentration in mammals. Human body contains about 0.1% of body weight as taurine. It has a number of physiological and pharmacological actions. It is also used in the therapy of important organs dysfunctions. In spinal cord it has inhibitory effects; like antiepileptic and anti-nociceptive. Taurine also inhibits substance p induced biting and scratching behavior. In spinal cord injury elevated level of taurine has been observed. Higher level of taurine has been also recorded in SCI therapy using, known clinical agent methyl prednisolone (MP). The increased taurine concentration seems to be involved in protection and regeneration of tissues following injury. In SCI along with physical injury secondary activities also takes place which are complex in nature. Secondary activity includes vascular events and activation of neutrophils, resulting endothelial damage. Activated neutrophils; release a variety of inflammatory mediators such as myeloperoxidase (MPO), reactive oxygen species (ROS), and some others. It is believed that taurine exert its protective action through scavenging of ROS and down regulating several other inflammatory mediators like tumor necrosis factors (TNFalpha). The inside of mechanism reveals toxic substance HOCl is produced by MPO is converted to less toxic substances through scavenging action of taurine. Amino acid therapy has its own limitations and to over come such situation there is a need to develop small, simple lipophilic analogs of taurine. Use of taurine analogs has provided better results; for example, N- chloro taurine (NCT) which is a taurine derivative has exhibited therapeutic advances over taurine. Taurine and its analogs with sound experimental and clinical support may constitute a new class of therapeutic agents for SCI., and perhaps this review may provide enough material to think of this.

[Suicidal attempts in three postoperative patients with renal cancer after alpha interferon withdrawal].

We report 3 cases of suicide attempts in postoperative patients with renal cancer after alpha interferon withdrawal. In the first patient, depression occurred during interferon therapy, and remained after interferon withdrawal. A suicide attempt occurred 7 months after interferon withdrawal. In the second and third patients, depression did not occur during interferon therapy, but suicide attempts occurred 40 days and 7 months after interferon withdrawal, respectively. Depression does not always disappear after interferon is discontinued. Psychiatric supervision should be continued even more frequently after interferon withdrawal. The increased risk of psychiatric side effects due to interferon, as well as their severity, suggest that interferon should be administered with caution.

Intra-arterial vein bypass using a vein-loaded stent system to occlude wide-necked aneurysms: an experimental study in dogs.

We treated 13 experimental wide-necked aneurysms of lateral type produced in dog carotid arteries with a vein-loaded stent system consisting of an autologous vein graft, a vein-carrier stent, and two other self-expanding Z-shaped stents. The vein-loaded stent, made by connecting the autologous vein graft to the vein-carrier stent, was implanted in the common carotid artery to seal the aneurysm's orifice, after which two booster stents were deployed. The distal stent was placed to fix the distal end of the vein graft, and the proximal stent was placed at the proximal venous portion of the vein-loaded stent to reinforce its proximal end. In this manner an intra-arterial bypass was established across the aneurysm. Of 13 aneurysms seven were completely occluded, preserving the parent artery. The remaining six procedures resulted in parent artery occlusion because of failures in stent deployment. Angiograms performed in within 1 week six successfully treated dogs revealed the parent artery to be patent in four but thrombosed in two. Histological study of successful cases showed as smooth intima with slight endothelial hypertrophy and partially organised thrombus. The intraluminal features were also observed with a vascular endoscope at the time of treatment in four dogs and at the time of follow-up angiography in two. The appearances corresponded well to the macroscopic findings in the specimens. Our vein-loaded stent system offers complete closure of the orifice, which does not occur with conventional stent placement. The method is believed to show clinical promise for treating wide-necked aneurysms not curable by embolisation of the sac.