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Query: UMLS:C0020672 (hypothermia)
 17,327 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The paradigm of long-term sleep deprivation was used as a model of chronic inescapable stress in rats. Several basic metabolic parameters (body weight changes, food and water intake, rectal temperature, serum glucose and creatinine), adrenal and thyroid secretion, norepinephrine and dopamine content and turnover in discrete brain regions, and open field behaviour were examined in the course of the exposure to experimental stress. Sleep deprivation over 7-9 days caused complete physical exhaustion of the animals. It was accompanied by hypothermia and hyperphagia. Adrenal activity was characterized by significant hypercorticism, but also by a relative decrease of the responsiveness to ACTH. A gradual decrease in the thyroid secretion was observed. Sleep deprivation elicited a depletion of norepinephrine in the hypothalamus and decreased its turnover, whereas hippocampal norepinephrine content decreased without considerable turnover alterations. Striatal dopamine content and turnover remained unaffected. Behavioural depression and altered open field activity were also observed in exhausted animals. Long-term sleep deprivation, therefore, seems to reproduce some of the biological correlates of the depressive illness, and may be useful in studying the development of coping failure as a result of chronic stress exposure.
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PMID:Neuroendocrine and neurochemical consequences of long-term sleep deprivation in rats: similarities to some features of depression. 181 84

The most important risk factors and findings of acute accidental hypothermia and concomitant local frostbites are reviewed. Both external and internal risk factors are usually present when exposure to cold is leading to death. The external factors are alcohol and psychic drugs, too light a clothing for the circumstances and wetness. Important internal factors are leanness, physical exhaustion and traumas in young persons and illnesses and degeneration of physiological heat conserving and production responses at old age. The signs caused by cold on the body are variable. In immersion hypothermia cases there are almost no changes, since the death occurs rapidly, most frequently from drowning. On the victims of dry frost first degree congelations, showing up as purple oedematic skin areas or spots, can be observed on the face and extremities. Stress ulcerations or haemorrhages in the stomach mucosa develop in ca. 70% of dry hypothermia cases. In long lasting exposures to cool temperature haemorrhagic pancreatitis, lung oedema and myxomatous skin oedema have been the characteristic signs. Frostbites developing concomitantly with fatal hypothermia show only oedema and hyperaemia, but no blisters or inflammation in the skin, which are the most conspicious vital reactions of frostbites after thawing.
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PMID:Some aspects on death in the cold and concomitant frostbites. 1099 30