Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Pharmaceutical Botany Candidate: Aneta Ritomská Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Ing. Lucie Cahlíková, Ph.D. Title of diploma thesis: Derivatives of Amaryllidaceae Alkaloids as Drugs Plants of the family Amaryllidaceae belong to the widespread species. They contain a large amount of Amaryllidaceae alkaloids (AA) which are known for their biological activity. AA possess a broad spectrum of biological activities including an antiviral, antimalarial, antitumor, cholinesterase's inhibitory activity and others. An interesting AA is ambelline which occurs mainly in plants of the genus Crinum and Nerine. So far the biological activity of this compound has been studied only marginally. In the studies conducted, this substance appears to be less interesting. A series of aliphatic and aromatic derivatives of ambelline has been prepared in the framework of this thesis. Subsequently, their cholinesterase inhibitory activity and GSK-3β inhibitory activity were studied. Cytotoxic activity on a panel of selected tumor and resting cell lines was also screened. Of the prepared derivatives, LC-125 (3-methoxybenzoylambellin) had an interesting biological activity. This substance showed a promising activity in all biological studies. GSK-3β inhibitory...

Adenosine is a ubiquitous metabolite with multiple physiological functions in organisms. In this thesis, I studied the effect of extracellular adenosine on Huntington´s disease (HD) model Drosophila melanogaster. I show that extracellular Adenosine signaling mitigates HD pathology by observing three main types of symptoms of the disease in Drosophila. The results suggest that the mechanism involves Drosophila melanogaster adenosine receptor signaling.

The primmary theme of this diploma thesis is to analyse the prevalence of overweight and obesity of children studying at second grade of elementary school in the district of České Budějovice. The theoretical part of the thesis was focused on the characteristics of the overweight and obesity and its influence on human?s health with the aim on children?s population. Furthermore, the thesis contains the main factors affecting occurence of overweight and obesity. Prevention and treatment of obesity has been presented as well. The crucial part of the thesis was the research itself. The research consisted of evaluation of results of antropometric measurement of the sample of probands studying at second grade of elementary school in the district of České Budějovice. Based on the measurement the height, weight, waist and hips circumference was found out. Furthermore, the birth weight and height was examined too. Based on the measurement the Body mass index was calculated and the predetermined research questions were answered. 243 probands from 9 elementary schools took part at the research. 11 girls were overweight (8,9% from the sample) and 17 boys (14,16%) were overweight. The prevalence of obesity was at 0,81% rate concerning girls and 10,83% rate concerning boys.

Diploma thesis entitled Healthcare Risks in Acute Forms of Coronary Heart Disease is divided into a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical part is divided into parts dealing with medicinal aspects, risk management and nursing care. The medicinal part defines the term coronary heart disease and describes its acute forms. The nursing care part describes how to care about a patient with acute CHD. It also points out the risky spheres in caring about a patient with acute CHD and describes possibilities of education provided by a nurse before discharging a patient to home care. The next part lists examples of diagnoses according to NANDA II that a nurse determines in patients with acute CHD. The research was performed with nurses from the cardiology department of the České Budějovice Hospital. Twelve nurses participated in the research in the qualitative research form based on semi structured interview. Three aims were set for the diploma thesis. The first aim was to find out whether nurses knew the risks that might occur in nursing care of acute CHD forms. The next aim of the thesis was to find out how nurses prevent the risks in nursing care of acute CHD forms. And the third aim was to find and compare differences in knowledge and skills between nurses from a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and those from a standard cardiology department in nursing care of acute CHD forms. Six research questions were based on the aims. 1: Do nurses know the risks that might occur in nursing care of acute CHD forms? 2: Do nurses know complications that might arise from the risks in nursing care of acute CHD forms? 3: Do nurses know how to proceed in a situation when a mere risk changes into a real problem? 4: Do nurses from the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) know how to proceed against the risks in acute CHD forms better than the nurses from the cardiology ward (CW)? 5: Are the CICU nurses able to prevent the risks better than the CW nurses? 6: Are the CICU nurses better aware of the risks that might occur in nursing care of acute CHD forms? I have managed to find answers to the research questions and thus to fulfil the aims set for the diploma thesis. It was found in the research, particularly by comparison of the knowledge and skills of the nurses from the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and those from the standard cardiology ward that the knowledge among the nurses from both the stations is comparable. Only the results of the standard cardiology ward nurses and their answers suggest that they try to concentrate on patient's psychological condition apart from provision of nursing care. The following conclusions were finally drawn from the research questions set for the research: Nurses are aware of the risks that might occur in nursing care of acute CHD forms. Nurses are aware of the complications that might arise from the risks in nursing care of acute CHD forms. Nurses know how to proceed in a situation when a mere risk changes into a real problem. Nurses from the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit know how to proceed against the risks in acute CHD forms better than the nurses from the standard cardiology ward. Nurses from the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit are able to prevent the risks better than the standard cardiology ward nurses. Nurses from the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit do not know the risks that might occur in nursing care of acute CHD forms better than the nurses from the standard cardiology ward. Study material for secondary and tertiary students summarizing how to care about a patient with acute CHD was prepared as a result of the thesis, with regard to the research with the nurses, who personally faced the patients with acute CHD and are experienced in the care both with and without complications.

Patent foramen ovale (PFO) has been associated with an increased risk of decompression sickness (DCS) in divers. Pathophysiologicaly this has been ascribed to paradoxical embolization of nitrogen bubbles from venous blood to systemic circulation, resulting in obstruction of peripheral capillaries and ischemic injury. However, the role of PFO has been largely debated and experimental and prospective clinical data has been missing. It is of note, that this hypothesis is not only of theoretical importance. The proof of PFO as a causative factor of DCS and, importantly, of unpredictable events (unprovoked DCS) could affect millions of divers worldwide through improved therapy and prevention. In our research we aimed to describe the pathophysiological role of PFO in decompression sickness and to determine whether the prevention of arterialization of post-dive venous gas emboli (VGE) would decrease the incidence of unprovoked DCS in divers. We have screened 489 scuba divers for the presence of PFO by means of transcranial color-coded Doppler ultrasonography. In a retrospective analysis we found that the incidence of unprovoked decompression sickness was 7% among these divers and that PFO was the only risk factor. Subsequently, we have studied the occurrence of VGE and arterial gas emboli (AGE) in divers with...

This thesis is focused on concept of coordinated rehabilitation within individuals in care of Alzheimer's disease. Objective of the thesis is to find out the possibilities of coordinated rehabilitation in the current concept of care for people with Alzheimer's disease. The thesis divided to two parts. The first part is focused on Alzheimer's disease, which describes what Alzheimer's disease is, its history, course, epidemiology, its risk factors, symptoms of how Alzheimer's disease is diagnosed and how it is treated. Another part of the theoretical part is dementia, where it is briefly described, what is the disease and other forms and division of dementia. The third and final part of the theoretical part is coordinated rehabilitation. This part describes what is a coordinated rehabilitation, its individual components and the conclusion of a specific activity that is used in a coordinated rehabilitation for people suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The research part of this work is focused on its objective and research questions, the methodology, results, discussion and conclusion are described. The qualitative research method was used in the research part. The technique for obtaining data for this research was a semi-standardized interview that was carried out with residential and outpatient staff providing services to people suffering Alzheimer's disease. The informants were selected by the method of deliberate selection. The data was then processed in Atlas.ti 7. In order to achieve the objective of this work, which is already mentioned above, two research questions have been determined. The first research question was focused on the differences in perception and the possibilities of using components of coordinated rehabilitation in residential and outpatient care for people with Alzheimer's disease. The second research question was focused on how the system of coordinated rehabilitation for people suffering Alzheimer's disease is most limited. The results of my work show that care for people suffering from Alzheimer's disease is insufficiently applied within the coordinated rehabilitation because the vast majority of practitioners who deal with such ill persons every day have no knowledge of this concept.

This thesis analyses the awareness of Alzheimer's disease among the lay public. The theoretical part of the thesis is focused on definition of Alzheimer's disease, is dedicated to Alzheimer's disease in context of social work and in context of awareness. The research part itself includes goals, hypotheses, methodology and presents the results of the questionnaire survey. The final part includes discussion and the conclusion. The goal of the thesis was to find out the extent of awareness of Alzheimer's disease in Jihlava. For evaluation of extent of awareness the range of its evaluation was formed, on whose base a good extent of awareness was found out. The research group consisted of lay public of age 18-40 years in Jihlava. In total 384 respondents participated in this research. One of the goals was to propose some countermeasures to increase awareness of the disease among the public in Jihlava. One of the results of this thesis is a crossword giving useful information about Alzheimer's disease. Quantitative research strategy was applied for the survey. The date were collected using the method of questioning with technology of questionnaire survey and were processed in Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and SPSS programs. For testing of the stated hypotheses the Pearson's chi-squared test, Kruskal-Wallis test and correlation analysis were applied. The thesis points out the importance of awareness of Alzheimer's disease and provides overview of awareness of Alzheimer's disease among the lay public. At the same time it can serve as a source of information concerning this disease.

Impairment of the cholinergic neurotransmission system is regularly detected in animal models of Alzheimer's disease as well as in human patients suffering from this serious disease. Moreover, there is increasing amount of evidence suggesting that activation of individual mAChR subtypes specifically influences the cleavage of APP, the precursor for β-amyloid. APP can be processed in an amyloidogenic or non-amyloidogenic pathway and a relative abundance of these patways contributes to establishing the final concentration of neurotoxic β-amyloid in the brain. In this work, I have studied the acute and chronic effects of A β1-42 on binding and functional characteristics of mAChR. I have demonstrated that Aβ1-42 present in cell culture expressing the individual subtypes of mAChR negatively and specifically influences the function of the M1 mAChR subtype. I have also detected a decline in muscarinic receptor-mediated signal transduction in brain tissue of young adult APPswe/PS1dE9 mice, a commonly used animal model of Alzheimer's disease. Demonstration of the impairment of muscarinic transmissin in transgenic mice by soluble β-amyloid that occurs earlier than amyloid pathology and behavioral deficit, and its imitation by soluble Aβ1-42 in vitro lend strong support to the notion of the early involvement...

Aim of thesis was create electronic database in form of internet pages with externalization in diseases and pests of potato. Besides summary informations (taxonomy, morphology, evolution, meaning, host plants, appearances, ekology, methods for regulation, photodocumentation, et al.) about individual pests and causal agent are mentioned abiotic diseases in thesis too. The part of database a list of chemical preparations which are permited in potatoes and symptomatic key to determination diseases and pests of potatoes.

Cardiovascular diseases are the most frequent death causation in most advanced countries. The citizens of the Czech Republic are unambiguously considered a population with an increased risk profile of untimely atherosclerosis. The paper addresses quantification of common risk factors of cardiovascular diseases (arterial hypertension, diabetes, smoking, obesity), monitoring of the number of other residential treatments, other cardiovascular incidents and deaths and especially the depressive disorder of 200 patients (aged 36 {--} 86 years) of the Invasive Cardiology Department of Nemocnice Karlovy Vary, s. r. o. indicated to be subject to coronarographic examination. As concerns depressive patients, we encounter the cardiovascular disease and sudden cardiac death more often than with the non-depressive ones. This applies also in the event when risk factors of cardiovascular disorders in the anamnesis are excluded in both groups. A man with a cardiovascular illness experiences a significant break period. He is directly limited in terms of his health and endangered in terms of his existence, social life and often even his life itself. Psychic changes under those circumstances are almost regular, the depression development is assumable. As many as 13 % of the approached cardiac patients state the occurrence of typical problems accompanying the depression in the past 14 days, with 27 % of them, the problems lasted longer than a week. The whole-life prevalence of depression ranges between 5 and 16%, a higher occurrence of depressive patients among cardiac patients is hence apparent. The average BMI of monitored women is 29,12 {--} hence at the border of normal weight and overweight, the average BMI of monitored men amounts to 29,20 {--} which indicates their obesity. Hence one may confirm that as concerns the monitored persons, a higher body mass index (BMI) is confirmed with monitored persons. The average wasteline is 104,29 with monitored women and 104,83 with monitored men {--} i.e. the content of visceral fat is considerable. When monitoring other residential treatments within half a year, most patients were those with angina pectoris. Regardless of their diagnosis, only three patients died.