Selenium (Se) has been suggested to be beneficial to obesity development. However, limited studies have evaluated the association between Se and childhood obesity and the findings are inconsistent.The aim of this study was to examine the association of Se levels with obesity in children in a cross-sectional study.A total of 62 obese (21 girls) and 65 normal-weight children (27 girls) aged 7 to ...

Emerging evidence indicates a potential role of selenium in the prevention of several types of cancer, including bladder cancer. We investigated the association between toenail selenium concentrations and bladder cancer risk in a population-based case-control study in New Hampshire. We analyzed data from 857 incidence cases diagnosed between July 1, 1994 and June 30, 2001 and 1,191 general popu...

Chicken liver mitochondria consumed O2 at an accelerated rate when supplied with low concentrations of hydrogen sulfide. Maximum respiration occurred in 10 microM sulfide, and continued more slowly up to concentrations as high as 60 microM. Sulfide oxidation was coupled to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthesis, as shown by firefly luciferase luminescence and by measurement of the mitochondrial...

BACKGROUND Scalp seborrheic dermatitis is a chronic type of inflammatory dermatosis that is associated with sebum secretion and proliferation of Malassezia species. Ketoconazole or zinc-pyrithione shampoos are common treatments for scalp seborrheic dermatitis. However, shampoos comprising different compounds are required to provide patients with a wider range of treatment options. OBJECTIVE T...

A catalytic-kinetic method for the determination of selenium is proposed. Alizarin navy blue is reduced by sodium sulfide to from a colorless product. The reaction is accelerated by trace amounts of Se (IV), and can be followed by measuring the decrease in absorbance of the dye at 620nm and 30 °C by the fixed time method. Selenium can be determined in the range of 0.004 — 0.12 1.1g.m1-1 . ...

Hydrogen sulfide is a signaling molecule that plays important roles in several physiological processes, and its methylation product trimethylsulfonium (TMS) is a natural constituent of human urine that could serve as a biomarker for hydrogen sulfide. In vitro studies showed that the enzyme indole-ethylamine N-methyltransferase (INMT) is responsible for the production of trimethylsulfonium as we...

The article reviews the progress in basic research of selenium and cancer prevention during the past decade. Special emphasis is placed on the following four major areas of discussion: 1) chemical forms of selenium and anticarcinogenic activity; 2) selenium-enriched food; 3) in vitro effects of selenite vs. monomethylated selenium; and 4) aromatic selenium compounds. It is clear that basic rese...

Cysteine (Cys) is inserted into proteins in response to UGC and UGU codons. Herein, we show that supplementation of mammalian cells with thiophosphate led to targeted insertion of Cys at the UGA codon of thioredoxin reductase 1 (TR1). This Cys was synthesized by selenocysteine (Sec) synthase on tRNA([Ser]Sec) and its insertion was dependent on the Sec insertion sequence element in the 3'UTR of ...

Selenium is an essential element in human diets but the risk of suboptimal intake increases where food choices are narrow. Here we show that suboptimal dietary intake (i.e. 20-30 µg Se person(-1) d(-1)) is widespread in Malawi, based on a spatial integration of Se concentrations of maize (Zea mays L.) grain and soil surveys for 88 field sites, representing 10 primary soil types and >75% of the ...

We report a molecular dynamics simulation of selenium, described by a three-body interaction. The temperatures Tg and Tc and the structural properties are in agreement with experiment. The mean nearest neighbor coordination number is 2.1. A small prepeak at about 1 Å can be explained in terms of void correlations. In the intermediate self-scattering function, i.e., the density fluctuation corre...