Thromboangiitis obliterans (TAO) is a vascular disease that affects small and medium-sized arteries and veins of both upper and lower extremities. Distal ischaemic lesions and digital necrotic ulcers, as well as major amputation rates, among these patients are not negligible. So far, no treatment option has been demonstrated to be completely effective for this disease. Endothelin-1 (ET-1) has b...

A supersaturated design is a design whose run size is not enough for estimating all the main effects. It is commonly used in screening experiments, where the goals are to identify sparse and dominant active factors with low cost. In this paper, we study a variable selection method via the Dantzig selector, proposed by Candes and Tao (2007), to screen important effects. A graphical procedure and...

In today's world, smoking is very common, and it is considered as a status symbol. Use of different kinds of tobacco in cigarettes and cigars is becoming a fashion. But most people are unaware of how critical this is for the development of cancerous ulcers. Almost five out of every 10 patients of Buerger's syndrome are smokers. Buerger tried to find the root cause of this particular problem. He...

BACKGROUND Thromboangiitis obliterans (TAO, also known as Buerger's disease) is a non-atherosclerotic inflammatory vascular disease that primarily affects arteries in the extremities of young adult smokers. Since the etiology of TAO is still unknown, therapeutic options are limited. Recent attempts in therapeutic angiogenesis have been promising. Therefore, the aim of our study was to evaluate ...

BACKGROUND This study assessed the effectiveness and safety of bosentan when administered to thromboangiitis obliterans (Buerger's disease) patients. METHODS A clinical pilot study was designed in which patients with ulcer and/or pain at rest were treated with bosentan p.o. at a dose of 62.5 mg twice daily during the first month, which was thereafter up-titrated to 125 mg twice daily. The stu...