BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia have been associated with atherosclerosis. Recent attention has focused on the possible role of proinsulin because most radioimmunoassays for insulin cross-react with proinsulin. Therefore, it is not known which of the two, insulin per se or proinsulin, is more strongly related to atherosclerosis. METHODS We examined the relation ...

background: inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (imt) is a tumor composed of myofibroblasts and a mixed inflammatory infiltrate that rarely undergoes malignant transformation. the most common sites of involvement include the lung, liver and orbit, but it has been reported to occur in nearly every site of the body, including oral cavity and soft tissue. although common in other sites, such a tumo...

variety of positive as well as negative regulatory signals are provided by antigen presenting cell in particular by dendritic cells. in this research, we studied the capacity of dendritic cells to expand antigen-specific t regulatory cells.we also investigated the role of tgf-beta in induction inhibitory functions of dendritic cells in mixed leukocyte reactions. dendritic cells were generated f...

The lean philosophy, which denotes business excellence through continuous improvement, originates from Japanese car manufacturer Toyota’s Production System (TPS). An area where lean is not fully explored is remanufacturing, a business that brings used products back to useful life. Remanufacturing is often a more complex process than manufacturing due to uncertainty of process steps/time and par...

Ultrasonic evaluation of the intima-media thickness in the common carotid artery (IMT-CCA) has been widely used as a marker of atherosclerosis. However, the definition of IMT-CCA is not uniform and it includes two quite different pathological changes; a general intima-media thickening and a local atherosclerotic change (plaque formation). The aim of this paper was to evaluate the IMT-CCA and lo...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Carotid intimal media thickness (IMT) and coronary calcium scores (CCS) are thought to reflect atherosclerotic burden. The validity of this assumption for IMT is challenged by recent meta-analyses; for CCS by absence of a relationship between negative scores, and freedom of future events. As such, we considered evaluation of the relationship between tissue IMT and CCS, and...

PURPOSE To evaluate clinical outcomes of first-line immunomodulatory therapy (IMT) and prednisone alone or late IMT in Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease. METHODS Retrospective cohort study of 152 patients with Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease evaluated in a referral uveitis clinic in Chile from 1985 to 2011. Medical records of these patients were reviewed. Demographic data, clinical evaluation, type o...

We examined whether hypertrophy of the carotid artery in patients with untreated essential hypertension is associated with compensatory carotid artery enlargement as these patients age. Carotid ultrasonography was evaluated in 163 patients with untreated essential hypertension (74 males and 89 females) and in 76 normotensive subjects. Intima-media end-diastolic thickness (IMT) and outer vessel ...

BACKGROUND Increased carotid intimal-medial thickness (IMT) and coronary artery calcification (CAC) are used as 2 markers of early atherosclerosis. Our objectives were to assess whether increased IMT and CAC are related and to determine the relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and carotid IMT in young adults. METHODS AND RESULTS A sample of 182 men and 136 women aged 33 to 42 year...

OBJECTIVE To assess the relationship between breast arterial calcification (BAC) detected on screening mammography and atherosclerosis of carotid arteries considering the most likely involved layer of the arterial wall. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 537 consecutive women who underwent screening mammography were enrolled in this study. Seventy-nine subjects having BAC, aged 46-75 years, and...