Magic™ Anti-Hemoglobin monoclonal antibody, clone N2303200

OBJECTIVE: Growth hormone (GH) increases insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) production and both hormones affect hippocampal plasticity. We have previously shown that Hbb and Alas2 in the rat hippocampus were robustly regulated by GH-infusions for six days, whereas other transcripts were weakly affected. Here, we explored the effects of prolonged GH administration on transcripts linked to neuroprotection and investigated whether serum IGF-I administration may exert similar effects. DESIGN: Hypophysectomised female rats were infused with GH or IGF-I for 19 days. Hbb, Alas2 and seven additional GH-and IGF-I-related transcripts were quantified by Q-RT-PCR in rat hippocampus. RESULTS: Three transcripts, Hbb, Alas2, and Alox15 were increased by both GH and IGF-I administration. The other transcripts were marginally affected. CONCLUSION: The 19-day GH-infusion induced similar effects as those reported after 6-day GH treatment, with the addition of the regulation of transcript Alox15. IGF-I induced altered gene expression in relation to its effect on weight gain. This study underlines that there is an entity of transcripts involved in neuroprotection and vascular tone that is regulated by both systemic GH and IGF-I. For other transcripts, the longer duration of this study did not significantly enhance the marginal effects of GH administration seen previously.

Aim: Maintaining neonatal resuscitation skills among health workers in low resource settings will require continuous quality improvement efforts. We aimed to evaluate the effect of skill drills and feedback on neonatal resuscitation and the optimal number of skill drills required to maintain the ventilation skill in a simulated setting. Methods: An observational study was conducted for a period of 3 months in a referral hospital of Nepal. Sixty nursing staffs were trained on Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) 2.0 and daily skill drills using a high-fidelity manikin. The high-fidelity manikin had different clinical case scenarios and provided feedback as "well done" or "improvement required" based on the ventilation performance. Adequate ventilation was defined as bag-and-mask ventilation at the rate of 40-60 breaths per minute. The effective ventilation was defined as adequate ventilation with a "well done" feedback. We assessed the correlation of number skill drills and clinical case scenario with adequate ventilation rate using pearson's correlation. We assessed the correlation of number of skill dills performed by each participant with effective ventilation using Mann Whitney test. Results: Among the total of 60 nursing staffs, all of them were competent with an average score of 12.73 +/- 1.09 out of 14 (p < 0.001) on bag-and-mask ventilation skill checklist. Among the trained staff, 47 staffs participated in daily skill drills who performed a total of 331 skill drills and 68.9% of the ventilations were done adequately. Among the 47 nursing staffs who performed the skill drills, 228 (68.9%) drills were conducted at a ventilation rate of 40-60 breathes per minute. There was no correlation of the adequate ventilation with skill drill category (p = 0.88) and the level of skill performed (p = 0.28). Out of 47 participants performing the skill drills, 74.5% of them had done effective ventilation with a mean average of 8 skill drills (SD +/- 4.78) (p-value- 0.032). Conclusion: In a simulated setting, participants who had an average skill drill of 8 in 3 months had effective ventilation. We demonstrated optimal skill drill sessions for maintain the neonatal resuscitation competency. Further evaluation will be required to validate the findings in a scale up setting.