Plasma

PHOENIX - When Zack Greinke visited Los Angeles this week to get his sore right elbow examined, Dodgers physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache prescribed him treatment the team has used for the last five seasons: platelet-rich plasma therapy. Greinke's blood was drawn and filtered to concentrate the platelets, which are cell fragments that promote healing. The platelet-rich plasma was injected into his elbow. Though Greinke's injection was designed to temper inflammation, the Dodgers have used PRP therapy in recent years on a variety of injuries, many of which they have described as more serious than Greinke's.

Plasma & Materials Technologies Inc. said it expects to report a fourth-quarter loss from operations because of slow demand for its chip-making equipment. It didn't specify the size of the loss. The Chatsworth company blamed a slowdown in the industry for its sluggish sales. Analysts expected the company to have a profit of 3 cents a share in the quarter, excluding charges, compared with 10 cents in the year-ago quarter.

"Sun Rings" collaborators Terry Riley, David Harrington and Willie Williams all describe Donald Gurnett as an amiable tour guide to the solar system. In fact, a visit to Gurnett's office can be exhilarating and start your head spinning from the implications that plasma physics and space sounds can have on life on Earth.

Recently, I've been doing a lot of yard work and as a consequence my hands are covered with wounds and Band-Aids. Plus a flea jumped onto my knee yesterday. Perhaps it's not surprising that the subject of bloodletting popped into my mind. Of course, many people know that in centuries past doctors and barber-surgeons used to "bleed" their hapless patients to help balance the body's humors (phlegm, blood, yellow and black bile).

Brody Kennedy was a typical sixth-grader who loved to hang out with friends in Castaic and play video games. A strep-throat infection in October caused him to miss a couple of days of school, but he was eager to rejoin his classmates, recalls his mother, Tracy. Then, a week after Brody became ill, he awoke one morning to find his world was no longer safe. Paranoid about germs and obsessed with cleanliness, he refused to touch things and showered several times a day. His fear prevented him from attending school, and he insisted on wearing nothing but a sheet or demanding that his mother microwave his clothes or heat them in the dryer before dressing.

Plasma & Materials Technologies Inc. has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of 2.5 million shares of its common stock. The offering is expected in late August at an estimated range of $9 to $11 per share, the company announced. Salomon Brothers will be the lead manager of the underwriting group and Unterberg Harris will act as co-manager.

A 35-year-old Santa Barbara triathlete stricken with a rare and virulent streptococcus infection--which has become notorious as the "flesh-eating" bacteria--was better Thursday afternoon, but remained in critical condition at the Sherman Oaks Hospital burn center.

A Newport Beach woman who arranged for a former NFL player to kill her wealthy boyfriend in a 1994 plot to collect $1 million in insurance money was sentenced Friday to life in prison. But sentencing for onetime New England Patriot linebacker Eric Naposki was continued to Aug. 10 after he refused to leave his courthouse holding cell. The prosecutor called Naposki's actions "a final blaze of no class and cowardice" by the man who fired six gunshots into the chest of Bill McLaughlin, who died in his Balboa Coves home.

HemaCare Corp., a Sherman Oaks company that performs blood-related services, said its MD Laboratories Inc. subsidiary acquired a San Diego plasma center for $75,000 in cash. The center, Essential Biologics, collects plasma from donors, and was previously owned by North American Biologicals Inc. of Miami, Fla. MD Laboratories also said it would acquire in the deal federal licenses to procure rare plasmas, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) plasma.

HemaCare Corp. said it tentatively agreed to acquire the assets of Pacific Plasma, a Woodland Hills company that buys and sells blood plasma. The value of the deal was not disclosed. Sherman Oaks-based HemaCare, which sells blood products and blood-related services, said one of the assets it would acquire is a computer system for tracking plasma.