Flinders University

About: Flinders University is a education organization based out in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 12033 authors who have published 32831 publications receiving 973172 citations. The organization is also known as: Flinders University of South Australia.

Evidence for the release of endogenous substance P from intestinal nerves

Abstract: The desensitization of receptors for substance P in the longitudinal muscle of the guinea-pig ileum has been studied. Receptors for substance P in the muscle became desensitized in the presence of relatively large concentrations of synthetic substance P; a desensitizing concentration of substance P of 7.5×10−9 M shifted the concentration-response curve for substance P about 20-fold to the right, while a desensitizing concentration of 7.5×10−8 M shifted the curve about 300-fold to the right. This desensitization appeared specific; concentration-response curves for carbachol, DMPP, 5-HT and bradykinin were not significantly affected by substance P, 7.5×10−8 M. Furthermore, substance P in concentrations up to 7.5×10−8 M did not modify transmission from either cholinergic nerves or enteric inhibitory nerves when these were stimulated electrically. However, hyoscine-resistant contractions produced by stimulation of nerves in the ileum at 10 Hz were abolished by exposure to concentrations of substance P of 7.5×10−9 M or greater, suggesting that these nerves release a substance similar to or identical with substance P. DMPP evoked small hyoscine-resistant contractions of the ileum. These contractions were also antagonised by desensitization of receptors for substance P. Immunohistochemical studies showed substance P-like immunoreactivity in nerve terminals of both the myenteric and submucous plexuses.

Treatment of postmastectomy lymphedema with low-level laser therapy: a double blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Abstract: BACKGROUND The current study describes the results of a double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, single crossover trial of the treatment of patients with postmastectomy lymphedema (PML) with low-level laser therapy (LLLT). METHODS Participants received placebo or one cycle or two cycles of LLLT to the axillary region of their affected arm. They were monitored for reductions in affected limb volume, upper body extracellular tissue fluid distribution, dermal tonometry, and range of limb movement. RESULTS There was no significant improvement reported immediately after any of the treatments. However, the mean affected limb volume was found to be significantly reduced at 1 month or 3 months of follow-up after 2 cycles of active laser treatment. Approximately 31% of subjects had a clinically significant reduction in the volume of their PML-affected arm (> 200 mLs) approximately 2–3 months after 2 cycles of treatment. There was no significant effect of placebo treatment, or one cycle of laser treatment, on affected limb volume. The extracellular fluid index of the affected and unaffected arms and torso were reported to be significantly reduced at 3 months after 2 cycles of laser therapy, and there was significant softening of the tissues in the affected upper arm. Treatment did not appear to improve range of movement of the affected arm. CONCLUSIONS Two cycles of laser treatment were found to be effective in reducing the volume of the affected arm, extracellular fluid, and tissue hardness in approximately 33% of patients with postmastectomy lymphedema at 3 months after treatment. Cancer 2003;98:1114–22. © 2003 American Cancer Society. DOI 10.1002/cncr.11641

Deriving accurate microbiota profiles from human samples with low bacterial content through post-sequencing processing of Illumina MiSeq data

Abstract: The rapid expansion of 16S rRNA gene sequencing in challenging clinical contexts has resulted in a growing body of literature of variable quality. To a large extent, this is due to a failure to address spurious signal that is characteristic of samples with low levels of bacteria and high levels of non-bacterial DNA. We have developed a workflow based on the paired-end read Illumina MiSeq-based approach, which enables significant improvement in data quality, post-sequencing. We demonstrate the efficacy of this methodology through its application to paediatric upper-respiratory samples from several anatomical sites. A workflow for processing sequence data was developed based on commonly available tools. Data generated from different sample types showed a marked variation in levels of non-bacterial signal and ‘contaminant’ bacterial reads. Significant differences in the ability of reference databases to accurately assign identity to operational taxonomic units (OTU) were observed. Three OTU-picking strategies were trialled as follows: de novo, open-reference and closed-reference, with open-reference performing substantially better. Relative abundance of OTUs identified as potential reagent contamination showed a strong inverse correlation with amplicon concentration allowing their objective removal. The removal of the spurious signal showed the greatest improvement in sample types typically containing low levels of bacteria and high levels of human DNA. A substantial impact of pre-filtering data and spurious signal removal was demonstrated by principal coordinate and co-occurrence analysis. For example, analysis of taxon co-occurrence in adenoid swab and middle ear fluid samples indicated that failure to remove the spurious signal resulted in the inclusion of six out of eleven bacterial genera that accounted for 80% of similarity between the sample types. The application of the presented workflow to a set of challenging clinical samples demonstrates its utility in removing the spurious signal from the dataset, allowing clinical insight to be derived from what would otherwise be highly misleading output. While other approaches could potentially achieve similar improvements, the methodology employed here represents an accessible means to exclude the signal from contamination and other artefacts.