Biomedical subjects

C D Kuo

Publications and source records attributed to C D Kuo.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed1989

Proton nuclear magnetic resonance studies of plasma to determine metabolic status of patients with adult respiratory distress syndrome.

Adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema of various etiologies. Here we report the first application of proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for the detection of abnormal metabolites in plasma from patients with ARDS. By comparing plasma obtained from the systemic artery with that obtained from the pulmonary artery, we could study the metabolic status of the lung in patients with ARDS. Although their concentrations may vary, the peaks for acetate, acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, phenylalanine, and other unidentified compounds in water-suppressed NMR of these patients' plasma were higher than in the normal controls. The proton NMR resonance at a chemical shift of about 7.4 ppm (relative to sodium tetradeutero-3-trimethyl-silylpropionate), presumably caused by phenylalanine and its related metabolites produced by a disordered amino acid metabolism, is detected in greater than 65% of the samples from ARDS patients. We discuss the detection of abnormal metabolites in terms of possible deranged metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, or amino acids in this syndrome.

3-Hydroxybutyric Acid↗

PubMed1988

Continuous monitoring of erythrocyte sedimentation process: a new possible mechanism of erythrocyte sedimentation.

An automated system is constructed to record the complete course of erythrocyte sedimentation process. In this system a light source and a paired photodetector are employed to monitor the change of light transmittance at the junction of plasma and the sedimenting red blood cell column, thus providing a continuous record of erythrocyte sedimentation as a function of time. Differentiation of this sedimentation--time curve yields a velocity--time curve of erythrocyte sedimentation. Frequently recorded "spikes" on top of the velocity--time curve imply the episodes of very rapid fall of erythrocytes in the sedimentation tube that cannot be explained by the currently accepted theory of erythrocyte sedimentation based mainly on Stokes' law, and a new mechanism of rouleau coalescing and fracturing is proposed to account for them.

Blood Sedimentation↗

PubMedDate not supplied

A fractal model for erythrocyte sedimentation.

The erythrocyte sedimentation test is a useful tool for studying the biophysical properties of red blood cells (RBCs) and the interactions between RBCs and bridging macromolecules in the suspending fluid. In our previous model of erythrocyte sedimentation formulated on the basis of a logistic growth equation of population dynamics (Kuo et al., 1989), the sedimentation rate constant, r, was assumed to be an intrinsic constant characteristic of the interaction between RBCs and bridging macromolecules in the suspending fluid. By analyzing the time dependence of r in that model, however, it was found that r depends on the sedimentation time, t. There is a power law relation between r(t) and t; the rate "constant" is therefore an effective kinetic rate constant rather than a true constant. The realization that r is an effective kinetic rate constant allowed the introduction of a power law function r(t) into the formalism of erythrocyte sedimentation. Doing so yielded a new model with the following capacities: (a) The skew-symmetric sedimentation curves can be modeled; (b) the experimental data can be fitted better with the new sedimentation equations; (c) a fractal dimension, D, and a new rate constant, k, can be defined; (d) the tendency for a certain amount of plasma to be trapped inside the rouleau network, xi, can be accounted for. The D, k, xi, and other parameters can be used in the analysis of RBC interactions mediated by bridging macromolecules.

Blood Sedimentation↗