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“Purpose: We evaluated urinary and sexual quality of life 1 year following robotic laparoscopic radical prostatectomy and identified preoperative variables predictive of a severe decrease from baseline.

Materials and Methods: Using a prospective robotic laparoscopic radical prostatectomy database we identified patients with greater than 1 year of postoperative followup. The UCLA-PCI SF-36v2 (TM) questionnaire was used to evaluate urinary and sexual quality of life before and 1 year after surgery. Severe worsening of the postoperative score was defined as a greater than 1 SD decrease. Demographic and preoperative clinical variables were evaluated

along with baseline scores on univariate and multivariate analysis.

Results: Between February 2003 and September 2007 a total of 1,225 robotic laparoscopic radical prostatectomies were performed at our center and 361 patients (52%) met inclusion criteria. On multivariate analysis baseline urinary function was the only predictor of significant worsening of urinary function (OR 1.04, p = 0.003). Baseline urinary bother was the only predictor

of significant worsening AZD6094 in vivo of urinary bother (OR 1.05, p < 0.0001). A significant decrease in sexual function was predicted by baseline sexual function (OR 1.03, p = 0.0001), baseline sexual bother (OR 1.03, p = 0.005) and nerve sparing technique (OR 0.31, p = 0.05). Predictors of a significant decrease in sexual bother were also baseline sexual function (OR 1.02, p = 0.0001), baseline sexual bother (OR 1.04, p = 0.0007) and nerve sparing technique (OR 0.38, p = 0.02). ORs indicated that higher baseline scores corresponded to a higher risk of postoperative score worsening.

Conclusions: We found that overall better baseline sexual and urinary scores are associated with better postoperative outcomes. However, the risk of a significant decrease in urinary function, urinary bother, sexual function and sexual bother is higher in patients with

better baseline scores. Nerve sparing positively affects sexual function and click here sexual bother.”
“In some neurons, muscarinic M(1)-class receptors control L-type(Ca(V)1) Ca(2+)-channels via protein kinase C (PKC) or calcineurin (phosphatase 2B; PP-2B) signaling pathways. Both PKC and PP-2B pathways start with phospholipase C (PLC) activation. In contrast, P/Q- and N-type (Ca(V)2.1, 2.2, respectively) Ca(2+)-channels are controlled by M(2)-class receptors via G proteins that may act, directly, to modulate these channels. The hypothesis of this work is that this description is not enough to explain muscarinic modulation of Ca(2+) channels in rat neostriatal projection neurons. Thus, we took advantage of the specific muscarinic toxin 3 (MT-3) to block M(4)-type receptors in neostriatal neurons, and leave in isolation the M(1)-type receptors to study them separately.