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Regimen-related mucosal toxicity is extremely common following cytotoxic chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Mucositis is as an important determinant of the inflammatory response and infectious complications in cancer treated patients. Most assessment scales for mucosal damage are focussed on oral mucositis, since it is easy to evaluate. Measuring gastrointestinal musocal damage objectively remains difficult because it cannot be seen directly or readily detected. One of potential non-invasive biomarkers of gastrointestinal mucosal damage is plasma citrulline level. Citrulline is an amino acid produced by small bowel enterocytes. Low concentration of free circulating citrulline signifies severe intestinal mucosal damage in humans with nonmalignant disorders, such as villous atrophy-associated diseases, short bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, and is used in follow-up after small bowel transplantation. The plasma citrulline level is a reliable and objective biochemical marker of enterocyte mass and function in humans, and therefore can be used to monitor enterocyte toxicity resulting from chemotherapy and radiotherapy during anticancer therapy in patients with severely disturbed gut integrity.

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A new approach for the separation of 6-aminoquinolyl-carbamyl (AQC)-derivatized amino acids has been proposed. The chromatography used ion-pairing mechanism to increase the method selectivity. Mobile phase was based on triethylamine buffer containing N,N-dimethyloctylamine as a modifier. A number of factors, buffer composition and pH, counterion concentration, temperature and acetonitrile gradient profile, were optimized to achieve final chromatographic conditions. With the presented analytical method, the separation and identification of 34 AQC-amino acids and amino compounds present in human plasma is possible. The results of validation proved the applicability of the method for quantification of 27 amino acids in biological samples. The ultrafiltration proposed as deproteinization procedure gave repeatable and reliable results for the amino acids under investigation. This method introduced in routine testing can be a suitable tool for amino acid profiling in plasma including all aspects of clinical application.

Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a progressive motor and cognitive decline and the development of psychiatric symptoms.

The present paper describes an in vitro assessment of the antibacterial properties and cytotoxic activity on mammalian cells of silver nanoparticles incorporated into an aluminium nano-oxide substrate produced by the thermal decomposition-reduction method. The Al 2 O 3 -Ag nanopowders show good bactericidal and fungicidal properties. An Al 2 O 3 -Ag (12?55 wt-%) specimen at the concentration of 50 mg mL 21 reduced considerably the populations of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis species, whereas the same nanopowder in a concentration of 90 mg mL 21 inhibited significantly the growth of P. aeruginosa, E. coli, S. aureus and Candida albicans and also significantly limited the number of B. subtilis. The Al 2 O 3 -Ag nanoparticles also showed no cytotoxic effects on the three selected cell lines, i.e. L929, BJ and HeLa, and the cells remained .75% viability, as measured by MTT assay, and .102% viability, obtained by EZ4U assay, relative to control at concentration as high as 200 mg mL 21 .

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