Acute heat stress requires immediate adjustment of the stressed individual to sudden changes of ambient temperatures. Chickens are particularly sensitive to heat stress due to development of insufficient physiological mechanisms to mitigate its effects. One of the symptoms of heat stress is endotoxemia that results from release of the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from the guts. Heat-related cytotox...

BACKGROUND The gut microbiota plays an important role in human metabolism; previous studies suggest that the imbalance can cause a metabolic endotoxemia that may be linked to weight gain and insulin resistance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the gut microbiota composition, the lipopolysaccharide levels and the metabolic profile in obese and normal-weight y...

UNLABELLED Bacterial endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide, LPS), is the component of the cellular wall of Gram negative bacteria. Endotoxemia (sepsis) could produce multiorgan failure and could be particularly danger in the early period of life. The effects of endotoxemia induced in the neonatal period of life on the pancreatic secretory function and on pancreatic defense of adult organism have not be...

OBJECTIVE The overproduction of vascular NO contributes toward the circulatory collapse observed in patients with septic shock. Dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), which has 2 isoforms, metabolizes asymmetrically methylated arginines (asymmetric mono- or di-methylarginine), endogenously produced NO synthase inhibitors. We wished to investigate whether reducing DDAH1 activity, using ...

OBJECTIVE Atherosclerosis is characterized as a chronic inflammatory condition that involves cholesterol deposition in arteries. Together with scavenger receptor B1 (SR-B1), the ATP-binding cassette transporters ABCA1 and ABCG1 are the major components of macrophage cholesterol efflux. Recent studies have shown that low-grade inflammation plays a distinct regulatory role in the expression of SR...

In the face of the global epidemic of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its strong association with the increasing rate of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, it is critical to detect MetS at an early stage in the clinical setting to implement preventive intervention long before the complications arise. Lipopolysaccharide, the cell wall component of Gram-negative bacteria produced from diet-dis...

We studied the impact of endotoxemia on cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral vascular resistance (CVR), and cerebral oxygen transport (O(2) transport) in fetal sheep. We hypothesized that endotoxemia impairs CBF regulation and O(2) transport, exposing the brain to hypoxic-ischemic injury. Responses to lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 1 microg/kg iv on 3 consecutive days, n = 9) or normal saline (n = 5) ...

INTRODUCTION Preclinical studies have shown that the endogenous nucleoside adenosine prevents excessive tissue injury during systemic inflammation. We aimed to study whether endogenous adenosine also limits tissue injury in a human in vivo model of systemic inflammation. In addition, we studied whether subjects with the common 34C > T nonsense variant (rs17602729) of adenosine monophosphate dea...

Chronic alcohol abuse increases the risk of developing acute lung injury approximately threefold in septic patients, and ethanol ingestion for 6 wk in rats impairs alveolar epithelial barrier function both in vitro and in vivo. Granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) is a trophic factor for the alveolar epithelium, and a recent phase II clinical study suggests that GM-CSF ther...