October 1982,

Volume 3, Number 4
Plenum press - New York and London
HOXRD6 3(4) 193-256 (1982)
ISSN 0195-9263

Page 226

Other Applications: Pregnancy and Neonates Baiborodov, B.D.

Some Peculiarities in Application of Hyperbaric Oxygenation During the Treatment of Acute Respiratory Insufficiency in Newborn Infants.

In: Abstracts VII Int. Cong. HBO Medicine, Moscow, Sept. 2-6, 1981; p368.

HBO was used in 830 newborn infants: in 555 infants with asphyxia, in 165 infants with syndrome of respiratory disturbances (SRD) and 110 infants with the aspiratory syndrome (AS). During the treatment of asphyxia an early use of HBO, 1-5 min after artificial pulmonary ventilation (APV), as compared with a late use of HBO, 10-30 min after APV, leads to a decrease of cerebral circulatory disorders by 4 time a, and or mortality rate by 8 times. During the treatment of SRD, the employment of HBO in the First 1-3 hrs of life led to recovery of 75% of infants. The delayed use of HBO, 12-48 hrs after birth is ineffective. HBO applied in the first hour of life during the treatment of AS prevented the development of aspiratory pneumonia in 92.7% of cases. HBO should be used during the treatment of neonatal asphyxia in combination with APV, infusion "alkalizing" therapy, and during the treatment of SRD and AS it should be combined with cardial, anti-bacterial, infusion, "alkalizing" therapy. The duration of sessions should not be less than 1.5-2 hrs and not more than 3 hrs at 2-3 ATA for 10-15 min and at 1.4-1.5 ATA for 1.5-2.5 hrs. When these conditions are met acid-base balance and blood gases normalize. If necessary, such sessions are repeated in 6-9 hors; to delay them for 12-30 hors is not advisable. Thus, effectiveness of HBO during the treatment of acute hypoxic states in new-born infants depends on its early, complex and repeated application under safe resuscitation and therapeutic regimes.

Brain: Jet setting drains brain

Too much long haul travel could shrink your brain.

Flying becomes even more dangerous this week. Even if you survive the in-flight food and seat-induced deep vein thrombosis, repeated jet lag without time to recover could shrink bits of your brain, research shows.

Five years of long-haul travel without rest time shrivels parts of the cortex and hippocampus, the thinking and learning parts of the brain, reports Kwangwook Cho of the University of Bristol.

Cho, who last year found that female cabin crew suffer poor memory and increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol after repeated long flights2, imaged the brains of 20 air hostesses working for international airline companies.

The group that had less than five days to recover when they flew over more than seven time zones showed significant shrinkage compared with those given a full two weeks to recover. The more demanding schedule also cut the women's ability in spatial learning and memory tasks.

"It's tantalizing stuff," says Charalambos Kyriacou, who studies biological rhythms at the University of Leicester, UK.
According to Kyriacou, jet lag confuses the master body clock in the brain, the supra-chiasmatic nucleus, which sends out signals such as boosted cortisol levels to reset the rest of the body. A withering hippocampus may be the result of disrupted cell division by these signals, he speculates.

"Your brain resets quickly but your different organs reset more slowly," Kyriacou says it's this that makes us feel lousy. To avert air-hostess brain syndrome, Cho recommends allowing plenty of time to recover after a flight.

• Cho, K. Chronic "jet lag" produces temporal lobe atrophy and spatial cogntive deficits. Nature Neuroscience 4, 567 568 (2001).
• Cho, K., Ennaceur, A. Cole, J.C. & Suh, C.H. Chronic jet lag produces cognitive deficits. Journal of Neuroscience 20, 15 (2000).

Glucose and Oxygen give good food for thought By Celia Hall, Medical Editor

BREATHING Oxygen or taking Glucose just before using the brain can significantly increase ability, according to new research. The study, which suggests that the brain responds well to a boost of oxygen or glucose just as muscle does, could have implications for treating Alzheimer's disease or chronic fatigue syndrome.

Dr Andrew Scholey, director of the human cognitive neuroscience unit at North Umbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, said "thought fuel" did improve mental performance. "Most of us accept that the capacity of exercise can be enhanced by increasing the delivery of oxygen or glucose to muscles," he says today in the Psychologist journal.

The researchers set out to discover if the same was true of the brain. "The brain is extremely energetic. It weighs two per cent of body weight. Even sitting down it is using 20 or 30 per cent of body energy. It is an incredibly energetic organ but it has a design fault - essentially is stores very little glucose," Dr Scholey said yesterday.

Oxygen improved performance at the highest levels on the computer game Tetris, showing that breathing it in immediately before the task increased ability. Dr Scholey says that oxygen could improve brain function.

In another experiment, students were given a drink of 25 or 50g of glucose and asked to subtract seven from a number repeatedly. Both levels of glucose increased the response rate by two to three a minute. On average students achieved 20 to 30 responses in two minutes without the glucose drink.

Earlier work by Dr Scholey's department, reported last year, has shown that the food supplements ginseng and ginko biloba in difficult and easy brain tests - subtracting sevens and subtracting threes - had a positive effect. Ginseng speeded responses and ginko improved accuracy.