Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published

by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Purpose: Little is known of current practice patterns for pediatric urolithiasis. We examined recent trends in imaging and surgical management.

Materials and Methods: The Pediatric Health Information System database is a national database collected at American pediatric hospitals. We searched the database from 1999 to 2008 to identify children diagnosed with urolithiasis. Inpatient hospital admissions, and emergency department and outpatient medical/surgical short stay visits were included. We examined imaging and surgical management trends during the study period using bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models.

Results: We identified 7,921 children diagnosed with urolithiasis during the study period, of whom 1,712 (22%) underwent stone related surgery and 6,318 (80%) underwent stone related ARS-1620 purchase diagnostic imaging. The surgery rate remained stable during

the study period (p = 0.15), as did the overall imaging rate (p Quisinostat = 0.2). However, computerized tomography use increased (26% to 45%) and plain x-ray of kidneys, ureters and bladder plus excretory urogram use decreased (59% to 38%) during the study period (each p < 0.0001). Surgery was associated with older patient age, female gender, white race and private insurance. Computerized tomography use was associated with older patient age, nonwhite PLEKHM2 race and public insurance. After adjusting for other factors,

including hospital region, the treating hospital was most important for predicting surgery or computerized tomography (each p < 0.0001).

Conclusions: Surgery and imaging for pediatric urolithiasis remained stable at pediatric hospitals in the last decade, although computerized tomography use has increased. The hospital where a patient receives treatment is the single most important feature driving computerized tomography and surgery use. Patient age, race and insurance status have a smaller but significant role.”
“Previous studies in our laboratory demonstrated that galanin and its receptors play important roles in nociceptive modulation in the central nervous system. The present study was performed to explore the antinociceptive effects of the galanin receptor 1 agonist M 617 in the central nervous system of rats. Intracerebroventricular injection of 0.1 nmol, 0.5 nmol, 1 nmol or 2 nmol of M 617 induced dose-dependent increases in hindpaw withdrawal latencies (HWLs) to noxious thermal and mechanical stimulations in rats. Furthermore, both intracerebroventricular injection of M 617 and galanin induced significant increases in HWLs in rats. Interestingly, there were no significant differences between the antinociceptive effects induced by M 617 and galanin, indicating that galanin receptor 1 plays main roles in galanin-induced antinociceptive effects in the brain of rats.