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Biomedical subjects

C Beguin

Publications and source records attributed to C Beguin.

26 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1996

Fifteen years of inpatient care in an academic division of general internal medicine: 1980-1994. Trends over time in patient's diagnoses, case-severity, case-complexity and mortality rate.

We describe the trends over time in patient's diagnoses, case-complexity, case-severity, length of stay and mortality rate during the last 15 years in an academic division of general internal medicine (GIM). Our study shows that GIM patients presented with a broad spectrum of diseases. Moreover, important changes were observed in the patient characteristics, i.e. a progressive increase in urgent admissions, severe medical conditions and elderly population. This evolution was associated with a significant rise in case-severity and case-complexity which explains the observed increase in hospital mortality rate. These variables should be accounted for when analyzing processes and outcomes of inpatient medical care in internal medicine.

Academic Medical Centers↗
PubMed1995

Metabolization of iron by plant cells using O-Trensox, a high-affinity abiotic iron-chelating agent.

A synthetic siderophore, O-Trensox (L), has been designed and synthesized to improve iron nutrition of plants. The affinity for iron of this ligand [pFe(III) = 29.5 and pFe(II) = 17.9] is very high compared with EDTA. In spite of its high and specific affinity for iron, O-Trensox was found to be able to prevent, and to reverse, iron chlorosis in several plant species grown in axenic conditions. It also allows the iron nutrition and growth of Acer pseudoplatanus L. cell suspensions. The rate of iron metabolization was monitored by 59Fe radioiron. Ferritins, the iron storage proteins, are shown to be the first iron-labelled proteins during iron metabolization and to be able to further dispatch the metal. Using Fe(III)-Trensox, the rate of iron incorporation into ferritin was found to be higher than when using Fe-EDTA, but slower than with Fe-citrate, the natural iron carrier in xylem. During a plant cell culture, the extracellular concentrations of iron complex and free ligand were measured; changes in their relative amounts showed that the iron complex is dissociated extracellularly and that only iron is internalized. This suggests a high affinity for iron of a putative carrier on the plasmalemma. In contrast with Fe-citrate and Fe-EDTA complexes, Fe(III)-Trensox is not photoreducible. Its ability to induce radical damage as a Fenton reagent was tested using supercoiled DNA as target molecule. Unlike Fe-citrate and Fe-EDTA, Fe(II)-Trensox and Fe(III)-Trensox were proven to be harmless even during ascorbate-driven reduction, while Fe-EDTA and Fe-citrate generate heavy damage to DNA.

Chemical Phenomena↗
PubMed1994

Development of standards and data quality control.

Health care expenses represent 6 to 10% of the Gross National Product in most European countries. This budget exceeds by far those devoted to Defence or Education. The rising cost of health care concerns all governments. In each country of the European Community, measures were and will further be taken in order to increase efficiency in the delivery of health care. Recent advances in information technology offer new opportunities to collect, process and exchange data to document health practices. In Belgium the Ministry of Public Health collects uniform medical summaries for all acute care hospital inpatients, while detailed health care activities are documented for each patient through a very precise billing system. The use of Minimal Clinical Data and Minimal Nursing Data Sets in hospitals became mandatory four years ago. The fundaments for any data collection is reliability, no matter what the preconceived aim was.

Belgium↗
PubMed1991

Hospital comparisons using a Euro Health Data Base for resource management and strategic planning.

A European approach for resource management and strategic planning has been implemented in the HOSCOM project of AIM by defining information standards needed across countries, as well as a methodology to measure resources and costs at the institutional and interinstitutional level. A Euro Health Data Base (EHDB) has been obtained in order to test data availability and comparability as well as to validate models through macrocomparisons using case-mix (DRG's, refined grouping, disease staging) and microcomparisons based on three diseases (cardiac valve replacement, diabetes mellitus and hip fracture). The EHDB's presently based on 274 164 medical record summaries sampled from 7 countries allowed us to build prototypes (using Clipper, Prolog and SQL) in order to export uniform aggregates in the different countries, with standard software tools for statistical comparisons. It showed the present feasibility of using case-mix based on the European Minimum Basic Data Set (MBDS) and the difficulty of obtaining uniform data on resources and costs other than length of stay across countries. Medical data confidentiality was assured but not yet population-based representativity. Given the present state of the EHDB, problems have been clearly identified in order to be solved by international research and development projects in the near future.

Abstracting and Indexing↗
PubMed1989

A new bacterial alcohol dehydrogenase active on degraded lignin and several low molecular weight aromatic compounds.

A new intracellular bacterial dehydrogenase has been purified. It was active in the reversible reduction by NADH of conjugated carbonyl groups in partially degraded lignin. It was also active on various aromatic aldehydes such as vanillin, syringaldehyde and cinnamaldehyde, but had no effect on acetovanillone and lignin models carrying a conjugated ketone. It is proposed that this enzyme functions as a broadly specific lignin dehydrogenase at the level of aldehydic groups that are present in the lignin preparations.

Acrolein↗
PubMed1985

A new bacterial dehydrogenase oxidizing the lignin model compound guaiacylglycerol beta-O-4-guaiacyl ether.

A lignin model compound, named in short guaiagylglycerol beta-guaiacyl ether (GGE), contains the beta-0-4 ether linkage that is common in the chemical structure of lignin. A Pseudomonas sp. (GU5) had been isolated as an organism able to grow with GGE as the sole source of carbon and energy. When grown on vanillate, the bacteria contained a NAD+ -dependent dehydrogenase converting GGE to a 355 nm absorbing product. The enzyme, named GGE-dehydrogenase, was purified about 160-fold using gel permeation, ion exchange on DEAE-Sephadex, and dye-ligand affinity chromatography. The new protein was about 52 kDa in apparent size with but one polypeptide chain after denaturation and reduction. According to several criteria, the product of GGE oxidation (Km = 12 microM) was identified as the corresponding conjugated ketone at the alpha-carbon of the C3 side-chain. The secondary alcohol function in GGE was apparently the sole target of the enzyme action. However the conversion of GGE into ketone catalyzed by the enzyme was only partial, and did not exceed 50%, probably because only one of the alpha-enantiomers was susceptible to enzyme attack. In contrast the ketone, either made by organic synthesis or by enzymic oxidation of GGE, could be totally reduced back to GGE (Km = 13 microM at pH 8.4, 8 microM at neutral pH), with NADH as the reductant, as confirmed by UV absorption and NMR spectra. Other model compounds with no primary alcoholic function, ether linkage or phenolic group were also substrates for the enzyme, confirming the specificity of GGE-dehydrogenase for the alpha-carbon position. Conjugation of the alpha-ketone with an adjacent phenolic nucleus interfered strongly with equilibrium constants and redox potentials of the system according to pH, and the enzyme displayed widely different optima with pH over 9 when oxidizing GGE, below 7 when reducing the ketone. Equilibrium studies showed that the ketone/GGE potential was -0.37 volt at pH 8.7, -0.23 volt at pH 7 (30 degrees C). The significance of this new dehydrogenase and its properties are discussed, especially in the general concern of lignin biodegradation.

Bacteria↗