The intervertebral disc is characterized by a tension-resisting annulus fibrosus and a compression-resisting nucleus pulposus composed largely of proteoglycan. The most important function of the annulus and nucleus is to provide mechanical stability to the disc. Degenerative disc disease in the lumbar spine is a serious health problem. Although the three joint complex model of the degenerative ...

An increased life expectancy and heightened awareness of the importance of maintaining physical fitness throughout adulthood equal more miles on knees.1-5 There are variations in the patient population with articular surface changes: age, physical demands, goals, and expectations. In the active individual, how do we keep these knees natural, painless, and moving? The wand of the arthroscope doe...

this study was designed to investigate whether administration of zinc sulphate could improve theresponse of mouse testis to degenerative effects of short term exposure heating. fifty-four adult male balb/cmice were anaesthetized and the scrotums of 36 of them were immersed for 15 min in a waterbath at 43°c.immediately after the heating, half of the heated animals (n = 18) were injected with sal...

background: previous researches about the effects of epididymal obstruction on the testes are contradictory, and the mechanism harmful effect of male duct system obstruction on seminiferous tubules still remains unclear. objective: the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of epididymal obstruction in prepubertal rats on the testis. materials and methods: 15 days of age, the young ra...

Cell therapies utilizing stem cells hold a great promise for the treatment of chronic-degenerative diseases. For more than a decade now, pre-clinical and clinical studies have been using bone marrow derived cells for therapy of diverse degenerative diseases. Cardiologists have unarguably performed the largest number of clinical trials and we will concentrate our presentation on the use of vario...

Epigenetic regulations are heritable changes in gene expression that occur in the absence of alterations in DNA sequences. Various epigenetic mechanisms include histone modifications and DNA methylations. In this review, we examine methods to study DNA methylations and their contribution to degenerative diseases by mediating the complex gene-by-environment interactions. Such epigenetic modifica...

Background Progressive selective deterioration of language is caused by cerebral lesions involved in processes of language elaboration and is characteristic of several forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Frontemporal dementia (FTD), that are neurodegenerative dementia and epidemiologically relevant. AD language disturbances are characterized by difficulties in word selection:...

Degenerative spondylolisthesis is four times more common in women than in men. Although this gender difference has long been recognised there has been no explanation for it. We have examined the radiographs and CT scans of 118 patients over the age of 55 years and of a control group under the age of 46 years. Our findings confirmed the presence of more sagittally-orientated facet joints in pati...

OBJECTIVES It has been proven that statin can protect synovial joints from developing osteoarthritis through its anti-inflammatory effects. However, studies on the effect of statins on spinal degenerative joint diseases are few and limited to in vitro studies. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between the statin dosage and the development of spinal degenerative joint diseases. DESIG...

The spine has several important functions including load transmission, permission of limited motion, and protection of the spinal cord. The vertebrae form functional spinal units, which represent the smallest segment that has characteristics of the entire spinal column. Discs and paired facet joints within each functional unit form a three-joint complex between which loads are transmitted. Surr...