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Adult rat hepatocytes are capable of assembling to form floating multicellular spheroids (spheroids) in a dish with a positively charged surface in primary culture. In this report we show that the conditioned medium of the early time period of the culture exhibited biologically defined activity that promoted the assembly of isolated hepatocytes to floating spheroid. This activity was present only in the initial 6-hour conditioned medium; it was highest in the initial 2 h of culture and gradually decreased over 6 h and was not detected thereafter for 7 days. The conditioned medium appeared to inhibit the disintegration of spheroids that occurred during transfer to a new positively charged dish in the presence of either new or conditioned medium collected after day 4. Furthermore, disintegrated spheroids again assembled to form floating spheroid in the presence of the conditioned medium. Since the activity present in the conditioned medium was linearly dose-responsive to the inoculated viable cell number but not to that of dead cells, some factors responsible for the activity were probably produced by the viable cells during only a short time in culture.

Ampicillin-cloxacillin (Viccillin S 'Meiji') by intravenous drip infusion was used in gynecological infections, with the following satisfactory results. 1) The drug was markedly effective in 2 out of 6 cases, effective in 4, being the efficacy rate 100%. 2) No abnormal laboratory findings and side effects were observed in our study.

The effect of hemodialysis on left ventricular performance in 10 uremic patients was studied utilizing echocardiography. Left ventricular function curves constructed by a lower body negative pressure method were compared before and after dialysis. Although hemodialysis caused a decrease in the stroke volume index at rest from 55 +/- 17 to 50 +/- 20 ml/m2, the left ventricular function curve did not show any detectable shift. Thus, it is concluded that a decrease in stroke volume secondary to dialysis is attributable to the reduction in preload, rather than to changes in the contractile state of the left ventricle.