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Introduction: Patients managed in the Pediatric Palliative Care Integral Unit (PPCIU) have serious neurological conditions that involve significant damage at central nervous system level. The movement disorder is a very common clinical problem and for the patients where an adequate control of muscle tone is not achieved with usual techniques or drugs, intrathecal baclofen therapy (IBT) should be considered., Materials and Methods: Descriptive retrospective study based on the review of clinical records of patients who received IBT being followed by the PPCIU of Madrid Autonomous Region in the timeframe between September 2012 and February 2021., Results: IBT was implanted in 8 patients affected by infantile cerebral palsy (ICP) with a Gross Motor Function Scale (GMFCS) IV-V, 3 patients was a Pantothenate kinase deficit-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN), 2 had Acquired Brain Damage, and the remaining 3 had, respectively, 2 glutaric aciduria type I (GA-1), and poly-malformative syndrome. In all patients we observed a period of clinical stability after IBT, we call this period "honeymoon". Two patients died while in the honeymoon period, at 24.9 and 19.6 months from implantation of the pump; the median of duration of the honeymoon period in the remaining 14 was 14.4 months (IQ: 8.3-25.8)., Conclusions: IBT was not only used in patients with non-progressive diseases, but also in the group of patients with neurodegenerative or progressive diseases. In all of them, after implantation of the device, we have objectified a period of clinical stability and a better control of muscle tone disorders., (Copyright © 2022 Sociedad Española de Neurología. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.)

A large tomato expressed sequence tag (EST) dataset (152 635 total) was analyzed to gain insights into differential gene expression among diverse plant tissues representing a range of developmental programs and biological responses. These ESTs were clustered and assembled to a total of 31 012 unique gene sequences. To better understand tomato gene expression at a plant system level and to identify differentially expressed and tissue-specific genes, we developed and implemented a digital expression analysis protocol. By clustering genes according to their relative abundance in the various EST libraries, expression patterns of genes across various tissues were generated and genes with similar patterns were grouped. In addition, tissues themselves were clustered for relatedness based on relative gene expression as a means of validating the integrity of the EST data as representative of relative gene expression. Arabidopsis and grape EST collections were also characterized to facilitate cross-species comparisons where possible. Tomato fruit digital expression data was specifically compared with publicly available grape EST data to gain insight into molecular manifestation of ripening processes across diverse taxa and resulted in identification of common transcription factors not previously associated with ripening.

We reported the ocular penetration of cyclosporin (CYA) and the immunosuppressive effect of rabbit corneal allograft using 0.025% CYA eye drops in alpha-cyclodextrin (alpha-CD). Local application using 0.025% CYA in alpha-CD showed the concentration of 4,133 ng/gr in the cornea, but no detectable levels in aqueous humor and serum. All eyes (10/10) in the CYA eye drop group remained clear for 100 days after corneal allografting. CYA eye drops halted and suppressed the corneal allograft's immune reaction when the treatment was begun early in the initial phase of rejection. These results indicate that 0.025% CYA eye drops in alpha-CD penetrate the cornea 5 to 10 times more than CYA eye drops in lipophilic vehicles. Furthermore, they are extremely effective in suppressing the immune reaction of corneal grafts.

We tested four different combinations of alpha-CD and CYA: 0.075% and 80 mg/mL alpha-CD, 0.025% CYA and 40 mg/mL alpha-CD, 0.009% CYA and 20 mg/mL alpha-CD, and 0.003% CYA and 10 mg/mL alpha-CD. We found that 0.025% CYA (alpha-CD[40 mg/mL]) resulted in the least corneal toxicity and penetrated in the cornea 5 to 10 times more than did lipophilic vehicle with CYA.