Exposure of conscious animals to environmental heat stress increases portal venous radical content. The nature of the observed heat stress-inducible radical molecules suggests that hyperthermia produces cellular hypoxic stress in liver and intestine. To investigate this hypothesis, conscious rats bearing in-dwelling portal venous and femoral artery catheters were exposed to normothermic or hype...

Hypoxic injury is a key pathological event in a variety of diseases. Despite the clinical importance of hypoxia, modulation of hypoxic injury mechanisms for therapeutic benefit has not been achieved, suggesting that critical features of hypoxic injury have not been identified or fully understood. Because mitochondria are the main respiratory organelles of the cell, they have been the focus of m...

BACKGROUND During fetal hypoxia blood is redistributed to the brain ('brain-sparing'). Sequential changes of the cerebral and placental circulation in parallel in comparisons between basal conditions and acute hypoxic stress have not yet been thoroughly studied in human fetuses. AIM To explore acute fetal middle cerebral artery (MCA) circulatory changes relative to umbilical artery (UA) blood...

CD105, a marker of endothelial cells, is abundantly expressed in tissues undergoing angiogenesis and is a receptor for transforming growth factorbeta. The pivotal role of CD105 in the vascular system was demonstrated by the severe vascular defects that occur in CD105-knockout mice, but the exact mechanisms for CD105 regulation of vascular development have not been fully elucidated. In light of ...

To achieve a better understanding of learning and declarative memory under mild transient stress, we investigated the effect of brief hypobaric hypoxia on spatial orientation in rats. Young male Wistar rats aged 30 days were exposed for 60 min to hypobaric hypoxia, simulating an altitude of 7,000 m (23,000 ft) either shortly prior to attempting or after mastering an allothetic navigation task i...

Dynamic changes in corneal thickness were measured in eight young and eight older normal subjects (mean ages 24.4 +/- 4.3 years and 71.9 +/- 7.3 years, respectively) to provide data for quantitative assessment of corneal hydration control and thereby provide information for studying age differences in this important aspect of corneal function. For each subject, pachometry data were obtained by ...

Nogo-A is the largest isoform of the Nogo/RTN4 (reticulon 4) proteins and has been characterized as a major myelin-associated inhibitor of regenerative nerve growth in the adult CNS (central nervous system). Apart from the myelin sheath, Nogo-A is expressed at high levels in principal neurons of the CNS. The specificity of Nogo-A resides in its central domain, NiG. We identified Apg-1, a member...

Oxidative stress increases endothelial mannose-binding lectin (MBL) binding and activates the lectin complement pathway (LCP). However, the molecular mechanism of MBL binding to the endothelium after oxidative stress is unknown. Intermediate filaments have been previously reported to activate the classical complement pathway in an antibody-independent manner. We investigated whether oxidative s...

Background: Some respiratory diseases may induce alveolar hypoxia thereby hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV). However, the mechanisms of this physiologic phenomenon are not fully understood. This study was the first to investigate the role of anion exchanger in sustained HPV.Methods: Experiments were performed in the isolated perfused rabbit lung. After preparation, the lungs were divided...