BACKGROUND Periodontal disease is a less common but important cause of septic pulmonary embolism (SPE). However, the pathogens causing periodontal disease-associated SPE (PD-SPE) have been poorly understood. Actinomyces species are resident microbiota in the oral cavity. Here we report a case of PD-SPE caused by Actinomyces species, which was identified by anaerobic culture of bronchoalveolar l...

Hypothesis / aims of study Phytotherapeutic agents, including Saw palmetto extract (SPE), are popular in many European countries as herbal remedies represent up to 80% of all drugs prescribed for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and associated lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). However, the mechanism of pharmacological action of SPE is not fully elucidated. Animal experiments with SPE have ...

One of the challenge fruit growers are facing is to balance between tree production and vegetative growth from year to year. To investigate the existence of genetic determinism for reproductive behaviour in olive tree, we studied an olive segregating population derived from a cross between 'Olivière' and 'Arbequina' cultivars. Our strategy was based on (i) an annual assessment of individual tre...

The role of concomitant and sinecomitant ant ¡tumoresistance in the regulation of metastatic outgrowth was assessed using methylcholanthrene (MCA)-induced tumors in C3H/HeJ mice. Variants of neoplasms MCA-F, MCA-D, and MCA-2A were selected for proclivity for sponta neous lung metastasis and expression of parental tumor-specific trans plantation antigens. The incidence of spontaneous lung méta...

Estradiol dehydrogenase (E2DH) is a well-known progester one-dependent enzyme in human endometrium, and its induc tion has been proposed as a means to test hormonal sensitivity of endometrial carcinoma. While administration of progestins to some patients with endometrial carcinoma resulted in in creased endometrial E2DH activity, efforts to induce this en zyme, in vitro, in these tumors have be...

Heretofore, unscheduled DMA synthesis (UDS) induced by DMA-damaging chemicals has been measured in nonreplicating human fibroblasts by autoradiographic meth ods that are not readily applicable to organotypic epithe lial cell cultures. In order to evaluate the range of chemi cal sensitivity and DNA repair response of human skin epithelial cells, we have developed a novel semiquantitative in vitr...

background and objectives: dermatophytes possess a wide array of virulence factors and various antifungal susceptibility patterns which influence their pathogenesis in humans and animals. the aim of this study was to evaluate antifungal suscep- tibility and keratinase and proteinase activity of 49 dermatophyte strains from the genera microsporum , trichophyton and epidermophyton which were isol...

background: the prevalence of toxoplasma gondii infection in the blood donors has been poorly studied. the aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of acute and chronic toxoplasmosis in blood products. methods: a total of 250 blood products (112 fresh frozen plasma and 138 packed cells) in the blood transfusion institute, shiraz, iran were tested for spe-cific t. gondii antibodies (igg an...

Canonical models of Markov decision processes (MDPs) usually consider geometric discounting based on a constant discount factor. While this standard modeling approach has led to many elegant results, some recent studies indicate the necessity time-varying in certain applications. This paper model infinite-horizon MDPs with factors. We take game-theoretic perspective – whereby each time step is ...