The hypothalamic peptide melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) plays important roles in energy homeostasis. Animals overexpressing MCH develop hyperphagia, obesity, and insulin resistance. In this study, mice lacking both the MCH receptor-1 (MCHr1 knockout) and leptin (ob/ob) double-null mice (MCHr1 knockout ob/ob) were generated to investigate whether the obesity and/or the insulin resistance li...

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease. In the present study, we investigated the response of subventricular zone (SVZ) adult stem cells in the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model of MS, and also the differentiation fate of these stem cells. Methods: Mice were immunized with MOG peptide emulsified in complete Freund'...

background: the role of retinoblastoma (rb) protein in cell cycle regulation prompted us to take up this study with the aim of assessing its role in the progression of oral cancer and to correlate with various clinicopathological parameters, including habits such as smoking, paan chewing, and alcoholism. materials and methods: this observational study included surgical specimens from 10 apparen...

Obese leptin-deficient ob/ob mice exhibit a low-grade chronic inflammation together with a low muscle mass. Our aim was to analyze the changes in muscle expression levels of genes related to oxidative stress and inflammatory responses in leptin deficiency and to identify the effect of in vivo leptin administration. Ob/ob mice were divided in three groups as follows: control ob/ob, leptin-treate...

A detailed understanding of pancreatic β-cell mass distribution is a key element to fully appreciate the pathophysiology of models of diabetes and metabolic stress. Commonly, such assessments have been performed by stereological approaches that rely on the extrapolation of two-dimensional data and provide very limited topological information. We present ex vivo optical tomographic data sets of ...

Adipocyte fatty acid-binding protein, aP2, is a member of the intracellular fatty acid binding protein family. Previously, studies have shown increased insulin sensitivity in aP2-deficient mice with dietary obesity. Here, we asked whether aP2-related alterations in lipolytic response and insulin production are features of obesity-induced insulin resistance and investigated the effects of aP2-de...