A 52-year-old woman with nonspecific left leg pain was examined by Tc-99m methylene diphosphonate (MDP) bone scintigraphy. The patient had been a marble quarry worker for 10 years and had developed chronic congestive heart failure secondary to pneumoconiosis. Her hemoglobin analysis and hematologic findings were interpreted as being consistent with sickle cell beta+ thalassemia and also hypersp...

Amplification of the 5' ends of cDNA, although simple in theory, can often be difficult to achieve. We describe a novel method for the specific amplification of cDNA ends. An oligo-dT adapter incorporating a dUTP-containing PCR primer primes first-strand cDNA synthesis incorporating dUTP. Using the Cap finder approach, another distinct dUTP containing adapter is added to the 3' end of the newly...

Moyamoya disease is a progressive vascular disorder of unknown etiology. Theories of inflammatory and immunologic mechanisms have been proposed as the pathogeneses. We have designed a new method of administering N-acetylmuramyl-L-alanyl-D-isoglutamine (MDP) for experimental induction of moyamoya disease using an intravascular interventional technique combined with rod-shaped embolic materials m...

Various vesicle structures and lipid compositions have been studied to identify the optimal type of liposome for delivery of the macrophage-activating agent muramyl dipeptide (MDP) to macrophages. Evaluation of the ability of liposomes to be phagocytosed by macrophages established that optimal initial rates of engulfment were obtained when multilamellar vesicles (MLV) composed of distearoylphos...

Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein (Nod) 2 is an intracellular pattern recognition receptor, which recognizes muramyl dipeptide (N-Acetylmuramyl-L-Alanyl-D-Isoglutamine: MDP), a bacterial peptidoglycan component, and makes a NF-κB-activating complex called nodosome with adaptor protein RICK (RIP2/RIPK2). Nod2 mutants are associated with the autoinflammatory diseases, B...

The biochemical mechanism by which mutations in nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain containing 2 (NOD2) cause Blau syndrome is unknown. Several studies have examined the effect of mutations associated with Blau syndrome in vitro, but none has looked at the implication of the mutations in vivo. To test the hypothesis that mutated NOD2 causes alterations in signaling pathways downstream of ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the combined effect of mechanical and chemical treatments on the shear bond strength (SBS) of metal orthodontic brackets on zirconia restoration. The zirconia specimens were randomly divided into 12 groups (n = 10) according to three factors: AL (Al2O3) and CO (CoJet™) by sandblasting material; SIL (silane), ZPP (Zirconia Prime Plus), and SBU (Single...

NOD2, one of the cytosolic proteins that contain a nuclear oligomerization domain (NOD), is a pattern recognition receptor (PRR) involved in innate immune responses to intracellular pathogens. Little is known, however, about the effect of NOD2 expression on the maternal-fetal relationship. Our aim was to elucidate the functions of NOD2 in normal decidual stromal cells (DSCs) from the first trim...