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The article discusses a study assessing the performance of Raman detection system as a quantitative biochemical detection tool, by using free peroxidase, with commonly used enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The results were compared with that of other absorbance, fluorescence, and chemiluminescence detection methodologies, which revealed that Sword peroxidase reagents had increased detection capability of low analyte samples.

In the article, the author discusses the actions that they took to reduce hospital-acquired pressure ulcers in their 166-bed acute rehabilitation hospital in the U.S. and enhance patient clinical outcomes. She cites the interdisciplinary team that they created to assess the existing wound management assessment system, documentation and education processes. She presents the several areas in their operation that they assessed including education, documentation and workshops.

This section presents a calendar of events related to pediatric nursing in Great Britain in 2006. The Lunchtime seminar, Malnutrition in Children and Young People: What Nurses Working With Children Need to Know and Do, organised by RCN Children and Young People field of practice with Abbott Nutrition will be held at The Royal Bath Hotel, Boumemouth on April 26. The Child Health Informatics Centre annual conference, Towards a Common Assessment Framework--Sharing Information on Children, will be held at Institute of Physics, London, England on April 27. The Paediatric Liaison Health Visitors/Nurses 4th national conference, Dangerous Liaisons--Communication and Confidentiality in Safeguarding Children, will be held at the Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham on May 11.

Prevention of abnormal misfolding and aggregation of alpha synuclein (syn) protein in vulnerable neurons should be viable therapeutic strategies for reducing pathogenesis in Parkinson's disease. The nonamyloid component (NAC) region of alpha-syn shows strong tendencies to form beta-sheet structures, and deletion of this region has been shown to reduce aggregation and toxicity in vitro and in vivo. The binding of a molecular species to this region may mimic the effects of such deletions. Single-chain variable fragment (scFv) antibodies retain the binding specificity of antibodies and, when genetically manipulated to create high-diversity libraries, allow in vitro selection against peptides. Accordingly, we used a yeast surface display library of an entire naive repertoire of human scFv antibodies to select for binding to a NAC peptide. Candidate scFv antibodies (after transfer to mammalian expression vectors) were screened for viability in a neuronal cell line by transient cotransfection with A53T mutant alpha-syn. This provided a ranking of the protective efficacies of the initial panel of intracellular antibodies (intrabodies). High steady-state expression levels and apparent conformational epitope binding appeared more important than in vitro affinity in these assays. None of the scFv antibodies selected matched the sequences of previously reported anti-alpha-syn scFv antibodies. A stable cell line expressing the most effective intrabody, NAC32, showed highly significant reductions in abnormal aggregation in two separate models. Recently, intrabodies have shown promising antiaggregation and neuroprotective effects against misfolded mutant huntingtin protein. The NAC32 study extends such work significantly by utilizing information about the pathogenic capacity of a specific alpha-syn region to offer a new generation of in vitro-derived antibody fragments, both for further engineering as direct therapeutics and as a tool for rational drug design for Parkinson's disease.