The postings have been light the last 3 weeks. With 2 periods of service and between them a trip to San Francisco for an NIH workshop, for which I have to author a review article, (and co-author 2 others) as well as 3 or 4 other things I have to finish writing, there has been little time left for my ‘hobby’. But fear not! I continue to survey the literature for whatever I think is interesting, and will catch up with some new ideas and new scribblings over the next few weeks.
O’Hare FM, Watson RWG, Molloy EJ: Toll-like receptors in Neonatal Sepsis. Acta Paediatrica 2013. If you are like me, you have heard about these things, but don’t know much about them. Maybe its because they hadn’t been discovered 35 years ago when I was in Med School, but then neither had surfactant and I know a lot about that. In fact I think they had only just figured out oxygen… anyway this is a clearly written and understandable introduction to these receptors that we may be trying to manipulate directly in the future.
Shen CM, Lin SC, Niu DM, Ru Kou Y: Development of monocyte toll-like receptor 2 and toll-like receptor 4 in preterm newborns during the first few months of life. Pediatr Res 2013. At the same time this article points out how little we know about the development of the TLRs and provides new data about 1 cell type.
Rautava S, Collado MC, Salminen S, Isolauri E: Probiotics modulate host-microbe interaction in the placenta and fetal gut: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Neonatology 2012, 102(3):178-184. 43 pregnant women were randomized to receive probiotics or placebo before they had a cesarean section at term. Probiotics were either bifidobacteria in 1 group, or B lactis plus a lactobacillus in another group. They found lactobacillus in all the placentas, including the controls! They also found bifidobacteria in some, and they found differences in toll like receptor modulation between the groups. Don’t know exactly what this means, but it seemed like a theme was developing for this weeks updates!
And now for something completely different…
Gandhi B, Rich W, Finer N: Achieving targeted pulse oximetry values in preterm infants in the delivery room. The Journal of pediatrics 2013(0). Neil Finer and his group (especially Wade Rich) have been instrumental in helping us figure out what happens to oxygen saturation in the first few minutes of life, and in trying to study how to resuscitate small babies better. This study studied the use of a system they have developed to track saturations, a system which gives a graphic display of whether you are in the right range. They found that using the system enables you to keep the baby in that range more of the time.
Neonatal Research 
We know you’re busy. We’ll wait…. Thanks for this blog. It comes in handy when some issue comes up on the ward and I know where to start to find some recent interesting commentary.