No abstract

Early postnatal use of dexamethasone has recently been shown to be effective in improving the pulmonary status in premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). To study the effect of dexamethasone on pulmonary inflammatory responses, we studied ten infants treated with dexamethasone and ten infants without this treatment. Serial tracheal aspirates were obtained for cell counts, neutrophil counts, total protein concentrations, and leukotriene B4 (LTB4) and 6‐keto prostaglandin (PG)F1α levels before and after starting the study. Infants in the dexamethasone‐treated group required significantly lower mean airway pressures for ventilation and had lower PaCO2 values from day 3 to day 14 than infants in the control group, suggesting better pulmonary function. For infants in the dexamethasone group, the tracheal aspirates showed significantly lower cell and neutrophil counts, protein concentrations, and 6‐keto‐PGF1α and LTB4 levels than in the control group. We conclude that early postnatal dexamethasone therapy may lessen lung inflammation and improve pulmonary function in infants with RDS. Pediatr Pulmonol. 1997; 23:193–197. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

In this paper, a novel miniature dual-mode bandpass filter based on modified Sierpinski fractal is proposed and realized on the ultra thin (100 µm) flexible liquid-crystal-polymer (LCP) substrate for wireless local area network (WLAN) IEEE 802.11a. The subwavelength property which leads to the miniature characteristic is investigated in this paper. We adopt the 3rd order Sierpinski geometry as the mainly dual-mode resonator to form a dual-mode filter. The measured result is in good agreement with the full-wave simulation result.