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Objective: To delineate thromboelastographic profiles of the premature infants with and without intracranial hemorrhage during the first 21 days of life. Methods: In this study, 49 premature infants (24 female; 25 male) were consecutively admitted at our neonatal intensive care unit during a 6 months period were subject to thromboelastography and standard coagulation assessments at birth and weekly up to 21 days. Sixteen out of 49 infants developed intracranial hemorrhage at birth. Results: The test results of 127/196 were considered eligible for analysis. Overall significant changes of the main thromboelastographic parameters were observed shortly after birth. Newborns with intracranial hemorrhage showed increased thromboelastogram-defined thrombin generation (shorter R and time to maximum amplitude times) from birth onward, suggesting a hypercoagulable state. No significant differences concerning thromboelastographic and coagulation assays parameters were found at birth between infants with and without intracranial hemorrhage, except for higher plasma D-Dimer concentration (p = 0.002) in the former infants. Finally, a positive correlation between clot lysis time and gestational age (Spearman's rho = 0.502,p = 0.002) was observed. Conclusions: Thromboelastographic profiles of the premature infants suggest an effective hemostatic function during the first post-natal weeks. Further study is needed to determine whether thromboelastography may be more useful than coagulation assays to reflect the bleeding risk of the premature infants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To evaluate, in a large population, differences in HDL levels between subjects with acute phase reaction (APR) and subjects without different HDL decreases depending on disease causing APR and correlations between HDL and APR parameters. Materials & methods: In 902 patients we retrospectively evaluated alpha-2-globulins, white blood cells, C-reactive protein (CRP) and lipid profiles. APR was defined by CRP >1.5 mg/dl. Patients were reselected in seven subsets: infections, rheumatic diseases, neoplasms, cerebro-cardiovascular diseases, traumatic/mental disorders, endocrine/metabolic diseases and controls. Results: Subjects with APR showed significantly lower HDL-C (age and gender adjusted). Subset 'infections' showed the lowest HDL-C values and the highest CRP values. HDL-C had inverse significant correlation with all APR parameters. At stepwise regression analysis gender, albumin, TG and CRP were independent predictors of HDL-C. Conclusion: Our data produced the observation that subjects with APR show HDL-C levels lower than non-APR subjects to a large and heterogeneous population. HDL-C levels decrease in a different manner on the basis of the disease causing APR, maybe depending on inflammation intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]