[What should be changed in Polish neonatal units in order to implement Family-Centered Care?]

The progress that has been made in neonatology is associated with an increasing number of painful procedures constantly being performed on the neonate. Additionally, prolonged hospitalization of premature neonates in NICUs isolates the family from their child. Parents may state that they do not have any parental feelings and cannot communicate with their newborns. The FCC (Family-Centered Care) initiative responded to emerging reports about the adverse consequences ensuing from the lack of parental access to hospitalized children. The FCC should be understood as care based on partner relations between families and health professionals, which is supposed to lead to health and well-being for both the children and their parents. The FCC should become standard practice in all neonatal intensive care units.

The effect of landscape structure on the distribution of brown hare Lepus europaeus in farmlands of Germany and Poland

Habitat management should be an important part of the brown hare (Lepus europaeus) conservation, but the habitat requirements of this species are not fully recognised. The aim of our research was to estimate these requirements by analysing the effect of various agricultural landscape structure features on the distribution of hares in five agricultural areas in Germany and Poland. The local density of hares was assessed in the spring and autumn of 2006 by using the method of spotlight–strip counts on 9–15 subareas in each research region. The structure of agricultural landscape has been described for each subarea: the share of grain, other crops and grasses as well as the density of crop edges and uncultivated places with wild vegetation. The density of hares was considerably higher in Germany than in Poland (18.8–48.4 vs. 4.1–9.5 indiv./km²). The hare density was positively correlated with non-grain crops in an area, with crop edges in two areas and with wild vegetation without trees in two areas, and negatively correlated with grassfields in two areas. The occurrence of wild vegetation without trees affected the hare density only in the study areas, where this habitat was relatively rare (<3 km/km²). It was suggested that proper projects aimed at habitat management for brown hares should be elastic, i.e. the projects should be modified depending on the structure of local landscapes. Moreover, the protection and creation of structures with wild vegetation among cropland seem to be considerable methods of brown hare or generally wildlife conservation; therefore, such measures should be an important part of agro-environmental packages.

[Activation of hemostasis in patients with chronic cholecystitis]

The aim of the study was to evaluate the influence of chronic cholecystitis on haemostasis. The study was conducted on 48 patients suffering from chronic cholecystolithiasis admitted for cholecystectomy to the Department of Surgery Regional Hospital in Białystok. The control group consisted of 25 healthy subjects in this same age range. As a result of the study we found out that patients with chronic cholecystitis had hypercoagulability characterised by increase plasma concentrations of the sensitive markers of haemostasis: prothrombin fragments (F1 + 2), thrombin/antithrombin complex (TAT) and D-dimer.

Adherence of bile-isolated bacteria to the bile ducts mucosa as a pathogenic factor in the development of inflammatory lesions

Bacterial infection of the bile system appears to be an important factor in the formation of stones. In view of the hypothesis that strains of E. c. form an essential factor in infections of the bile ducts, an attempt has been made to determine the connection between infections of the bile ducts and the adherence of E. c. to the epithelium of the gallbladder. The research covered 148 patients operated electively for cholecystolithiasis (121), cholecystocholedocholithiasis (26) and recurrent lithiasis (1). In bile collected from the gallbladder in the course of the operation, E. coli strains were isolated. Cholangioscopy performed in 26 patients enabled the macroscopic evaluation and grading of inflammatory lesions of bile duct mucosa. The mucosa of the gallbladder was evaluated histologically. The adherence test was performed using homologous and heterologous strains of E. c. isolated from the bile of gallstone patients. The adherence occurred most frequently in the neck of the gallbladder (71-100%) in those patients in whom an infectious process of the bile ducts mucosa was endoscopically diagnosed. The adherence of bacteria to the epithelium of the gallbladder did not depend on the type of inflammation (acute, chronic).

Probing the binding of Tb(III) and Eu(III) to the hammerhead ribozyme using luminescence spectroscopy

BACKGROUND

Divalent metal ions serve as structural as well as catalytic cofactors in the hammerhead ribozyme reaction. The natural cofactor in these reactions is Mg(II), but its spectroscopic silence makes it difficult to study. We previously showed that a single Tb(III) ion inhibits the hammerhead ribozyme by site-specific competition for a Mg(II) ion and therefore can be used as a spectroscopic probe for the Mg(II) it replaces.

RESULTS

Lanthanide luminescence spectroscopy was used to study the coordination environment around Tb(III) and Eu(III) ions bound to the structurally well-characterized site on the hammerhead ribozyme. Sensitized emission and direct excitation experiments show that a single lanthanide ion binds to the ribozyme under these conditions and that three waters of hydration are displaced from the Tb(III) upon binding the RNA. Furthermore, we show that these techniques allow the comparison of binding affinities for a series of ions to this site. The binding affinities for ions at the G5 site correlates linearly with the function Z(2)/r of the aqua ion (where Z is the charge and r is the radius of the ion).

CONCLUSIONS

This study compares the crystallographic nature of the G5 metal-binding site with solution measurements and gives a clearer picture of the coordination environment of this ion. These results provide one of the best characterized metal-binding sites from a ribozyme, so we use this information to compare the RNA site with that of typical metalloproteins.