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‘Swansong’ And ‘ Losing Yourself’: Meditations On Life, Death And The Liminal, Cristal Duhaime

RadioDoc Review

This article considers two very personal audio documentaries that reflect on love and identity via the liminal space between life and death. Swansong, by award-winning UK radio producer Hana Walker-Brown, is set in a hospital, as Hana and her father bear witness to her grandmother’s dying and celebrate her joyful life. Losing Yourself, by US producer Ibby Caputo, is a revelatory account of dealing with a cancer diagnosis.

Swansong is a picture of a person fondly remembered but Hana elevates it beyond eulogy into a multi-layered meditation. Her grandmother Joan’s voice flutters in and out of ethereal recreations of …

Many People In Scotland Now Benefit From Anticipatory Care Before They Die: An After Death Analysis And Interviews With General Practitioners, Julia Tapsfield, Charlie Hall, Carey Lunan, Hazel Mccutcheon, Peter Mcloughlin, Joel J. Rhee, Alfonso Leiva, Juliet Spiller, Anne Finucane, Scott Murray

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Background Key Information Summaries (KIS) were introduced throughout Scotland in 2013 so that anticipatory care plans written by general practitioners (GPs) could be routinely shared electronically and updated in real time, between GPs and providers of unscheduled and secondary care. Aims We aimed to describe the current reach of anticipatory and palliative care, and to explore GPs' views on using KIS. Methods We studied the primary care records of all patients who died in 2014 in 9 diverse Lothian practices. We identified if anticipatory or palliative care had been started, and if so how many weeks before death and which …

P2x7 Receptor Activation Induces Reactive Oxygen Species Formation And Cell Death In Murine Eoc13 Microglia, Rachael Bartlett, Justin J. Yerbury, Ronald Sluyter

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

The P2X7 purinergic receptor is a ligand-gated cation channel expressed on leukocytes including microglia. This study aimed to determine if P2X7 activation induces the uptake of organic cations, reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation, and death in the murine microglial EOC13 cell line. Using the murine macrophage J774 cell line as a positive control, RT-PCR, immunoblotting, and immunolabelling established the presence of P2X7 in EOC13 cells. A cytofluorometric assay demonstrated that the P2X7 agonists adenosine-5'-triphosphate (ATP) and 2' (3')-O-(4-benzoylbenzoyl) ATP induced ethidium(+) or YO-PRO-1(2+) uptake into both cell lines. ATP induced ethidium+ uptake into EOC13 cells in a concentration-dependent manner, with …

Sensitivity To Lysosome-Dependent Cell Death Is Directly Regulated By Lysosomal Cholesterol Content, Hanna Appelqvist, Linnea Sandin, Karin Bjornstrom, Paul Saftig, Brett Garner, Karin Ollinger, Katarina Kagedal

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Alterations in lipid homeostasis are implicated in several neurodegenerative diseases, although the mechanisms responsible are poorly understood. We evaluated the impact of cholesterol accumulation, induced by U18666A, quinacrine or mutations in the cholesterol transporting Niemann-Pick disease type C1 (NPC1) protein, on lysosomal stability and sensitivity to lysosome-mediated cell death. We found that neurons with lysosomal cholesterol accumulation were protected from oxidative stress-induced apoptosis. In addition, human fibroblasts with cholesterol-loaded lysosomes showed higher lysosomal membrane stability than controls. Previous studies have shown that cholesterol accumulation is accompanied by the storage of lipids such as sphingomyelin, glycosphingolipids and sphingosine and an up …