Benzodiazepine Use Is Associated With Poorer Spinal Cord Stimulation Outcome in 373 Neuropathic Pain Patients.

Objectives: The aim of the study is to investigate whether benzodiazepine use differs between patients with favorable and unfavorable spinal cord stimulation (SCS) treatment outcome. We hypothesize that the patients with unfavorable SCS outcome would exhibit a higher level of benzodiazepine use.

Materials And Methods: Using a case-control study setting, we examined benzodiazepine use in SCS patients and in matched population controls as a potential risk factor poor SCS outcome.

High Level of Childhood Trauma Predicts a Poor Response to Spinal Cord Stimulation in Chronic Neuropathic Pain.

Background: Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) relieves pain by delivering doses of electric current to the dorsal column of the spinal cord and has been found to be most effective in the treatment of neuropathic pain. Psychological distress is a significant risk factor for the development of chronic pain and has been found to affect the outcome of SCS. Childhood trauma is a risk factor for chronic pain, but has not previously been studied in SCS patients.

Robustness of the Process of Nucleoid Exclusion of Protein Aggregates in Escherichia coli.

Unlabelled: Escherichia coli segregates protein aggregates to the poles by nucleoid exclusion. Combined with cell divisions, this generates heterogeneous aggregate distributions in subsequent cell generations. We studied the robustness of this process with differing medium richness and antibiotics stress, which affect nucleoid size, using multimodal, time-lapse microscopy of live cells expressing both a fluorescently tagged chaperone (IbpA), which identifies in vivo the location of aggregates, and HupA-mCherry, a fluorescent variant of a nucleoid-associated protein.

In vivo transcription kinetics of a synthetic gene uninvolved in stress-response pathways in stressed Escherichia coli cells.

The fast adaptation of Escherichia coli to stressful environments includes the regulation of gene expression rates, mainly of transcription, by specific and global stress-response mechanisms. To study the effects of mechanisms acting on a global level, we observed with single molecule sensitivity the effects of mild acidic shift and oxidative stress on the in vivo transcription dynamics of a probe gene encoding an RNA target for MS2d-GFP, under the control of a synthetic promoter. After showing that this promoter is uninvolved in fast stress-response pathways, we compared its kinetics of transcript production under stress and in optimal conditions.