BACKGROUND Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) can result in intestinal mucosal barrier (IMB) dysfunction. This study was undertaken to demonstrate the effect of IGF-I on the intestinal mucosal barrier in rats with SAP and its possible mechanisms. METHODS Seventy-two male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three groups: a sham operation (SO group, n=24), a SAP group not treated with IGF-I (SA...

Gaucher disease (GD) is characterized by accumulation of glucosylceramide (GC) in the cells of monocyte/macrophage system. The degradation of GC is controlled by glucosylceramidase (GCase) and saposin (Sap) C, a member of a family of four small glycoproteins (Saps A, B, C and D), all derived by proteolytic processing of a common precursor, prosaposin (PSAP). Saps contain six cysteine residues, ...

In this paper I have studied the transbilayer pore formation in a stretched lipid vesicle. The pore appearance in spherical bilayers is a process more intricate then in plane lipid bilayers. Here we have studied the influence of the elastic stretching of the membrane on the pore appearance. A minimum value of the spherical surface extension corresponding to a membrane stretching is required in ...

Highly specific, high-resolution scintigraphic images of amyloid-laden organs in mice with experimentally induced amyloid A protein (AA) amyloidosis were obtained after intravenous injection of 123I-labeled serum amyloid P component (SAP). Interestingly, a much higher proportion (up to 40%) of the injected dose of heterologous human SAP localized to amyloid and was retained there than was the c...

Serum amyloid P (SAP) is a common component of human amyloid deposits and has been identified in atherosclerotic lesions. We investigated the extent of the colocalization of SAP with apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I), apoB, apoC-II, and apoE in human coronary arteries and explored potential roles for SAP in these regions, specifically the effect of SAP on the rate of formation and macrophage recognit...

Many different techniques have been used for xylem sap collection, but few direct comparisons of techniques have been conducted and few comparisons have been based on comprehensive analyses of xylem sap. Moreover, the suitability of extraction techniques for use on plants grown under water-stress conditions has not been addressed. Xylem sap was extracted from both well-watered and water-stresse...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Upregulated CD64 expression on neutrophils is the most useful marker for acute bacterial infections and systemic inflammation. However, it is unknown whether CD64 is involved in the pathogenesis of acute pancreatitis (AP). This study was designed to determine whether CD64 is implicated in severe acute pancreatitis (SAP), and thus, is a suitable marker for SAP. METHODS SAP was ...

A full decomposition of the predictive entropy (PE) of the spontaneous variations of the heart period (HP) given systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and respiration (R) is proposed. The PE of HP is decomposed into the joint transfer entropy (JTE) from SAP and R to HP and self-entropy (SE) of HP. The SE is the sum of three terms quantifying the synergistic/redundant contributions of HP and SAP, whe...

2 Stretched exponential relaxation in glassy systems 2 2.1 Mathematical properties of the stretched exponential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1.1 τ distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1.2 Behavior near zero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.1.3 Properties of G(k)/G(τ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....