Heroin and cocaine have very different unconditioned receptor-mediated actions; however, in the brain circuitry of drug-reward and motivation, the two drugs establish common conditioned consequences. A single experience with either drug can change the sensitivity of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons to glutamatergic input. In the case of cocaine, ...

Acute ischemic stroke is a neurological emergency that can be treated with time-sensitive interventions, including intravenous thrombolysis and endovascular approaches. Extensive study has demonstrated that rapid assessment and treatment are essential to improving neurological outcome. For this reason, acute ischemic stroke was chosen as an Emergency Neurological Life Support protocol. ...

Prostate cancer (PrCa) is the most common male cancer in developed countries and the second most common cause of cancer death after lung cancer. We recently reported a genome-wide linkage scan in 69 Finnish hereditary PrCa (HPC) families, which replicated the HPC9 locus on 17q21-q22 and identified a locus on ...

BACKGROUND: Surgical resection for intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) of the pancreas has increased over the last decade. While IPMN with main duct communication are generally recommended for resection, indications for resection of side-branch IPMN (SDIPMN) have been less clear. We reviewed our single institutional experience with SDIPMN and indications ...

Individualization of drug therapy, described as tailoring drug selection and drug dosing to a given patient, has been an objective of physicians and other health-care providers for centuries. An understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease, the mechanism of action of the drug, and exposure-response relationships provides the framework for ...

BACKGROUND: The need for routine use of preoperative biliary drainage (PBD) for major liver resection in jaundiced patients has recently been questioned. METHODS: We present our experience of 22 consecutive patients with hilar biliary obstruction who underwent major liver resection without PBD between January 2007 and January 2011. RESULTS: Twenty-two ...

Porphyromonas gingivalis is a Gram-negative, anaerobic bacterium involved in periodontitis and peri-implantitis that can invade and survive inside host cells in vitro. P. gingivalis can invade human gingival fibroblasts (GF), but no data are available about the role of P. gingivalis' capsule in GF invasion. In the current study, we ...

The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) is a coordinated hormonal cascade intimately involved in cardiovascular and renal control and blood pressure regulation. Angiotensin II (Ang II), the major RAS effector peptide, binds two distinct receptors, the angiotensin type-1 receptor (AT(1)R) and the angiotensin type-2 (AT(2)R) receptor. The vast majority of the physiological ...

Morphology is the basis of the diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). The WHO classification offers prognostic information and helps with the treatment decisions. However, morphological changes are subject to potential inter-observer variance. The aim of our study was to explore the reliability of the 2008 WHO classification of MDS, reviewing ...

Intraosseous pneumatocysts are benign gaseous bone lesions, generally asymptomatic and incidentally discovered on X-ray. These characteristics explain why these lesions are unknown to most practitioners and their low representation in medical literature. The description of an incidentally discovered iliac pneumatocyst gives us the opportunity to provide a review of available ...

The characterization of roughness at the nanoscale by the means of atomic force microscopy (AFM) was performed on high aspect ratio glancing angle deposited titanium thin films. With the use of scanning electron microscopy as well as x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, it was shown that the AFM measurements gave rise to ...

Aim  The aim of this paper was to systematically review the efficacy and safety of botulinum toxin (BoNT) injections to the salivary glands to treat drooling in children with cerebral palsy and neurodevelopmental disability. Method  A systematic search of The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PubMed, CINAHL (Cumulative Index ...

PURPOSE: Depression and suicide are major public health concerns, and are often unrecognized among the elderly. This study investigated social inequalities in depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation among older adults. METHODS: Data come from 1,226 participants in PROSPECT (Prevention of Suicide in Primary Care Elderly: Collaborative Trial), a large primary ...

The aim was to further characterize the SKG model of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and its potential for studying intervention treatments, with special focus on bone targeting therapies. Three individual studies were conducted, using a total of 71 SKG mice, comparing arthritis induction with mannan versus zymosan A, female versus male ...

Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by a mutation in the gene encoding the Huntingtin protein. Although the precise mechanism by which neuronal degeneration occurs is still unclear, several elements are important to its development: 1) altered gene expression and protein synthesis, 2) mitochondrial damage and 3) the ...

Subjects with persistent left superior vena cava were classified on the basis of the presence and thickness of both superior venae cavae, the anastomotic ramus between the superior venae cavae (anastomotic ramus), and the presence of both azygos veins. Among subjects with persistent left superior vena cava, the percentage of ...

BACKGROUND: Specific immunotherapy via the subcutaneous or oral route is associated with local and, in some cases, systemic side effects and suffers from low patient compliance. Due to its unique immunological features, the skin represents a promising target tissue for effective and painless treatment of type I allergy. The current ...

Mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) are inherited metabolic diseases caused by mutations in genes coding for lysosomal enzymes involved in the degradation of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). Dysfunction of any of these enzymes results in the accumulation of GAGs, which leads to severe clinical symptoms and significantly shortened life span. Several kinds of therapies have ...

Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is the most common hereditary vascular dementia caused by mutations in NOTCH3 gene. Pathology is manifested in small- and middle-sized arteries throughout the body, though primarily in cerebral white matter. Hemodynamics is altered in CADASIL and NOTCH3 is suggested to ...

Vascular stiffness increases with advancing age and is a major risk factor for age-related morbidity and mortality. Vascular stiffness and blood pressure pulsatility are related; however, temporal relationships between vascular stiffening and blood pressure elevation have not been fully delineated. To examine temporal relationships among vascular stiffness, central hemodynamics, microvascular ...

Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (MALDI MS) can detect and image a variety of endogenous and exogenous compounds from latent fingermarks. This opportunity potentially provides investigators with both an image for suspect identification and chemical information to be used as additional intelligence. The latter becomes particularly important when ...

Overall benefits of EGFR-TKIs are limited because these treatments are largely only for adenocarcinoma (ADC) with EGFR activating mutation. The treatments also usually lead to development of resistances. We have established a panel of patient derived xenografts (PDXs) from treatment naïve Asian NSCLC patients, including those containing "classic" EGFR activating ...

INTRODUCTION: Emergency operations for perforations and anastomotic leakage of the upper gastrointestinal tract are associated with a high overall morbidity and mortality rate. An endoscopic vacuum therapy (EVT) has been established successfully for anastomotic leakage after rectal resection but only limited data exist for EVT of the upper GI tract. ...

Hypertension is an important side effect of sunitinib treatment. In a retrospective study in 255 patients, single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA), vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR)-2, endothelin-1 (ET-1), and endothelium-derived nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) were multivariately tested against hypertension grades and changes in systolic ...

BACKGROUND: The follow-up of patients treated for colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) is not standardized. The accuracy of an increase in carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels for finding recurrences after treatment for CRLM is compared in this retrospective cohort study with the accuracy of routine imaging modalities of liver and chest. METHODS: ...

The historical context in which saccades are made influences their latency and error rates, but less is known about how context influences their spatial parameters. We recently described a novel spatial bias for antisaccades, in which the endpoints of these responses deviate towards alternative goal locations used in the same ...

Ectopic pancreas is a relatively rare condition that only occasionally causes the development of symptoms. This report presents a case of ectopic pancreas presenting as an inflammatory mass that formed in the gastric wall, which was successfully treated by surgical resection. A 32-year-old female was admitted due to a 3-year ...

A newly synthesized series of chalcone derivatives containing pyrazole rings were synthesized and evaluated for their cytotoxic activities in vitro against several human cancer cell lines. Most of the prepared compounds showed potential cytotoxicity against human breast cancer cell lines MCF-7, HEPG-2, and HCT-116. Also the compounds were evaluated as ...

The etiopathogenesis of polymorphic light eruption (PLE) has been linked to impaired UV-immunosuppression, Langerhans cell (LC) retention, and an absence of neutrophil infiltration into UV-exposed PLE skin. We have previously shown that photohardening restores the impaired neutrophil responsiveness to the chemoattractants leucotriene B4 and formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanin in PLE patients. The aim ...

PURPOSE: This retrospective study was designed to evaluate the hypothesis that open reduction internal fixation (ORIF) of an unstable osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) lesion results in a high percentage of acceptable outcomes at long-term follow-up. METHODS: Eight patients who had been treated with ORIF for unstable knee OCD lesions were identified. ...

Exon shuffling has been characterized as one of the major evolutionary forces shaping both the genome and the proteome of eukaryotes. This mechanism was particularly important in the creation of multidomain proteins during animal evolution, bringing a number of functional genetic novelties. Here, genome information from a variety of eukaryotic ...

Anxiety in epilepsy has recently become a focus of interest for a number of reasons. Epidemiological studies have established that anxiety disorders are twice as common in patients with epilepsy compared to the general population, while in referral centres their prevalence is even higher. In addition, it has been recently ...

Cognitive enhancers that act by increasing glycine transmission might be useful adjuncts to cocaine-cue extinction training to deter relapse. The study investigated the effects of combining treatments of the glycine transporter-1 (GlyT-1) inhibitor, Org24598, with extinction training on the subsequent reacquisition of cocaine self-administration. Squirrel monkeys and rats were trained ...

The performance of a range density functional theory functionals combined in a quantum mechanical (QM)/molecular mechanical (MM) approach was investigated in their ability to reliably provide geometries, electronic distributions, and relative energies of a multicentered open-shell mechanistic intermediate in the mechanism 8R-Lipoxygenase. With the use of large QM/MM active site ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Predicting a system's behavior based on a mathematical model is a primary task in Systems Biology. If the model parameters are estimated from experimental data, the parameter uncertainty has to be translated into confidence intervals for model predictions. For dynamic models of biochemical networks, the nonlinearity in combination ...

Peroxiredoxins (Prxs) are a ubiquitous family of proteins that play important roles in insects in protection against oxidative stress through the detoxification of cellular peroxides. Here, we describe the cloning and characterization of a Prx4 cDNA of the silkworm Bombyx mori (BmPrx4). The BmPrx4 gene has an open reading frame ...

Resistive switching memory devices are promising candidates for emerging memory technologies because they yield outstanding device performance. Storage mechanisms for achieving high-density memory applications have been developed; however, so far many of them exhibit typical resistive switching behavior from the limited controlling conditions. In this study, we introduce photons as ...

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) and sociodemographic parameters on depression during pregnancy. Study design: Between September 2010 and September 2011, 200 consecutive women with HG were defined as the study group and 200 consecutive pregnant women without any signs and ...

INTRODUCTION: Methionine dependency occurs frequently in tumor cells. Here we have investigated the effect of methionine deficiency on metastatic potential of gastric cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Model of peritoneal carcinomatosis and xenograft was generated by intraperitoneal or subcutaneous implantation of gastric cancer cells in ...

Despite decades of research, remaining safety concerns regarding disease transmission, heterotopic tissue formation, and tumorigenicity have kept stem cell-based therapies largely outside the standard-of-care for musculoskeletal medicine. Recent insights into trophic and immune regulatory activities of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), although incomplete, have stimulated a plethora of new clinical trials ...

Many publications have evaluated the correlation between Cytochrome P450 1A1 (CYP1A1) Ile462Val polymorphism and cervical cancer risk, but the results remain inconclusive. To provide a more robust estimate of this effect, a meta-analysis was carried out. We systematically searched PubMed, Embase and CBM databases for studies published before May 2012. ...

Careful regulation of the body's immunoglobulin G (IgG) and albumin concentrations is necessitated by the importance of their respective functions. As such, the neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn), as a single receptor, is capable of regulating both of these molecules and has become an important focus of investigation. In addition to ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: T16A(inh) -A01 is a recently identified inhibitor of the calcium-activated chloride channel TMEM16A. The aim of this study was to test the efficacy of T16A(inh) -A01 for inhibition of calcium-activated chloride channels in vascular smooth muscle, and consequent effects on vascular tone. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH: Single channel and ...

Two new butenolides, designated trichocyalides A and B, were isolated along with the known compound harzianolide, from the culture broth of Trichoderma sp. FKI-5513 by solvent extraction, ODS column chromatography and HPLC. Their structures were elucidated by several spectral analyses, showing that they have the common skeleton of butenofuranone. Trichocyalides ...

The object of this study is to report on determinants of stunting, defined as low height for age, among children in the occupied Palestinian territories. Using 2006-2007 cross sectional survey data collected by the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics and using multivariate mixed model techniques for logistic regression, the relationships ...

Research on genes and medications has advanced our understanding of the genetic basis of individual drug responses. The aim of pharmacogenomics is to develop strategies for individualizing therapy for patients, in order to optimize outcome through knowledge of the variability of the human genome and its influence on drug response. ...

In this three-center, prospective, non-randomized, controlled trial, we performed a qualitative and quantitative histological and morphometric assessment of the normal uncinate process (UP). The soft tissue and bony elements of the normal UP of 16 adults were investigated and compared with 28 age- and gender-matched archival reference-group samples of neighboring ...

Abstract Objective: This retrospective study evaluated iron chelating therapy (ICT) discontinuation and costs in Sickle cell disease (SCD) Medicaid recipients using healthcare claims from 2006-2010. Methods: Patients with ≥1 SCD diagnosis claim, ≥2 claims for deferoxamine (DFO) or deferosirox (DFX), and continuous enrollment ≥6 months prior to and 18 months ...

BACKGROUND: Industry and orthopaedic surgeons often partner to develop new technology, which can lead to orthopaedic surgeons having financial conflicts of interest (FCOI). It is essential these FCOI be conveyed clearly to patients. It is unclear, however, whether and to what degree patients understand the ramifications of physician FCOI. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: ...

Along with the increasing adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) are expectations that data collected within EHRs will be readily available for outcomes and comparative effectiveness research. Yet the ability to effectively share and reuse data depends on implementing and configuring EHRs with these goals in mind from the beginning. ...