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Biomedical subjects

L M Olson

Publications and source records attributed to L M Olson.

60 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Inhibitors of nitric oxide synthase influence oocyte maturation in rats.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the effect of inhibiting nitric oxide synthase (NOS) on the number of ovulated oocytes and on oocyte meiotic maturation. METHODS: Female Sprague-Dawley rats (25 days old) were superovulated with a subcutaneous injection of 10 U pregnant mare's serum gonadotropin, followed 52 hours later by a subcutaneous injection of 10 U human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Three hours before and 3 hours after hCG injection, the rats were treated orally with the vehicle (0.5% methylcellulose) as the control or with either of two NOS inhibitors, N omega-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) and L-N6-(1-iminoethyl)-lysine (L-NIL). The rats were killed 20 hours after hCG injection, and oocytes present in the oviduct were flushed, counted, and classified for stages of meiosis. In addition, ovarian oocytes (12 hours post-hCG) and ovulated oocytes were treated with an immunofluorescent stain for the presence of endothelial NOS (eNOS). RESULTS: Strong positive staining for eNOS was observed in the cytoplasm of ovarian and ovulated oocytes. Control rats ovulated an average 43.0 +/- 4.1 oocytes each, which was lowered with either L-NAME or L-NIL (23.8 +/- 4.3 and 23.5 +/- 4.0 oocytes per rat, respectively; P < .002). We observed that significantly fewer ovulated oocytes obtained from rats treated with NOS inhibitors were at metaphase II (P < .006), the normal stage of meiosis for unfertilized oocytes, and a significantly greater percentage of oocytes displayed atypical morphology as compared with control oocytes (P < .0001). CONCLUSION: Ovarian nitric oxide synthesis is required for maximal ovulation, and a lack of nitric oxide during the periovulatory period results in severe defects in oocyte maturation.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Adequacy of EMS data collection during pediatric cardiac arrest: are EMTs getting the whole story?

OBJECTIVE: To compare the initial emergency medical services (EMS) prehospital assessment of medical and traumatic cardiopulmonary arrest in the pediatric patient with that of the Office of the Medical Investigator (OMI) and assess differences and implications for EMS training and prevention. DESIGN: Retrospective review of ambulance run forms with the OMI autopsy confirmations. SETTING: An urban EMS system and the state Office of the Medical Investigator. PARTICIPANTS: Patients 15 years of age or less who were treated by prehospital personnel from November 1, 1990, to October 31, 1991, for a medical or traumatic arrest. INTERVENTION: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Ambulance runs were reported for 2,586 pediatric patients. Of these, 42 (1.6%) had suffered arrests, with 32 (76%) medical arrests and ten (24%) traumatic arrests. Children 1 year of age or less accounted for 75% of the medical arrests, while children more than 1 year of age accounted for 80% of the traumatic arrests (p = 0.003). Overall mortality was 81%. When EMS prehospital assessments of medical and traumatic arrests were compared with autopsy reports, there was good agreement for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) (kappa = 0.70), but poor agreement for child abuse (kappa = 0.37). CONCLUSION: The authors found good agreement between EMS prehospital assessments and autopsy diagnoses for identifying pediatric SIDS, but child abuse was not well identified prior to autopsy.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Developing condition-specific measures of functional status and well-being for children.

This paper describes the American Academy of Pediatrics' program to develop several condition-specific measures to assess the functional status and well-being of children with chronic conditions. The development of a measure for children between 5 and 12 years of age with asthma serves as a template for the development of measures for other conditions and is the focus of this paper. The processes followed in the drafting of content, refinement, and pilot testing of the measure are discussed in this paper. The domains addressed in the asthma measure include physical symptoms; the child's physical activity; the child's social activity; the family's social activity; the emotional impact on the child; the emotional impact on the family; and health care utilization. Each domain is represented by a subscale in the measure. Content for individual items within subscales was established by conducting focus groups with parents and physicians and by reviewing the literature. The measure was tested through an in-depth cognitive interview process and pilot tested by administering the measure to 95 parents of children with mild, moderate, and severe asthma. Five of the seven subscales had acceptable internal consistency reliability as measured by coefficient alpha. Construct validity was shown for some scales by significantly different scores for children with mildly versus moderately severe asthma.

Asthma↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Family planning for teens: strategies for improving outreach and service delivery in public health settings.

The persistent underuse of family planning services by inner-city, low-income, sexually active youth underscores the importance of testing innovative programs that maximize participation. Presented in this paper is an analysis of a Chicago public health clinic's special program for adolescents that originated from the staff's observations of the scheduling, educational, and support needs of teens seeking family planning services from a traditionally managed public health facility. Between December 1982, when the special program--the Teen Clinic--was implemented, and March 1985, more than 600 adolescents sought social support and contraceptive services--an 82 percent increase in new-patient registration compared with the enrollment before the program began. In contrast, two neighboring public health department facilities without special family planning programs for teens experienced either a small increase, 4 percent, or a modest decrease, 17 percent, in utilization by teenagers during the same period. The increased use of the study facility by teens, coupled with patients' self-reported nonuse of alternative sources of care and referral patterns, suggests that the new program was successful in recruiting sexually active teens who had previously been inadequately protected against pregnancy. The perceived institutional and interpersonal factors influencing 153 teens' initial and repeated use of the Teen Clinic, as measured by a structured survey, echo the findings of previous research. Strategies suggested by the study's findings for improving outreach and service delivery are described.

Adolescent↗