Osteopontin (OPN) expression increases in the heart during hypertrophy and heart failure. Here, we studied the role of OPN in pressure overload-induced hypertrophy and analyzed the signaling pathways involved in hypertrophy. Aortic banding (AB) was performed in a group of wild-type (WT) and OPN knockout (KO) mice to induce pressure overload. Left ventricular (LV) structural and functional remod...

VAR2CSA mediates sequestration of Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes in the placenta, increasing the risk of poor pregnancy outcomes. Naturally acquired antibodies (Ab) to placental parasites at delivery have been associated with improved pregnancy outcomes, but Ab levels and how early in pregnancy Ab must be present in order to eliminate placental parasites before delivery remains unk...

BACKGROUND The relationship between multidrug resistance (MDR), inappropriate empiric therapy (IET), and mortality among patients with Acinetobacter baumannii (AB) remains unclear. We examined it using a large U.S. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study using the Premier Research database (2009-2013) of 175 U.S. hospitals. We included all adult patients admitted with pneumonia or s...

BACKGROUND γ-Aminobutyric acid-B receptor antibodies (GABA(B)R-ab) were recently described in 15 patients with limbic encephalitis (LE), associated with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) or with concurrent glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) antibodies. We analyzed the frequency of GABA(B)R-ab in 147 patients with LE or neurologic syndromes associated with GAD-ab. METHODS We examined the presence o...

Background: Plasma membrane of the spermatozoa interacts with and is altered by abundant seminal PDC-109 present in their immediate milieu in vivo with damaging effect in a time- and concentration- dependent manner. Therefore we hypothesized that sequestration of detrimental protein from ejaculates would be beneficial for cryopreservation of sperm cells. To this aim we evaluated the effect of s...

introduction: intravenous drug users as a serious health problem in communities have economical and social effects as well as health and hygienic complications. viral infections may be transmitted through drug injection by shared syringes among users. the aim of this study has been to determine the relative frequency of hbv, hcv and hiv infection’s markers as epidemiological data in ahvaz. mate...

objective: due to the increased prevalence of thyroid dysfunction in subjects with type 2 diabetes and also this fact that antibodies could potentially identify subjects at risk of thyroid dysfunction, this study was conducted to investigate thyroid autoimmunity in type 2 diabetic patients. material and methods: among patients referred to yazd diabetes research center, 4000 type 2 diabetic pati...

The knowledge about dietary habits and their influence in the development of autoimmune thyroid disease is insufficient. The aim of this study was to analyse the association of dietary factors and plasma thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO-Ab) and/or thyroglobulin antibodies (Tg-Ab). The study enrolled 1887 participants originating from the South Croatia. Participants with elevated plasma TPO-Ab...

Metal-ion and sequence dependent changes in the stacking interactions of bases surrounding abasic (AB) sites in 10 different DNA duplexes were examined by incorporating the fluorescent nucleotide probe 2-aminopurine (2-AP), opposite to the site (AB-APopp) or adjacent to the site (AB-APadj) on either strand. A detailed study of the fluorescence emission and excitation spectra of these AB duplexe...