Mechanical stimulation is critical to both physiological and pathological states of living cells. Although a great deal of research has been done on biological and biochemical regulation of the behavior of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), the influence of biomechanical factors on their behavior is still not fully documented. In this study, we investigated the modulation of mechanical ...

Introduction: Although patients do not experience sever pain after laparoscopic surgery, most of them experience acute or chronic pain afterward. While conventional pain killers including NSAID and narcotics in laparoscopic surgery have specific side effects, their application is inevitable. This study compares the efficacy of local anesthetic drugs and conventional pain killers in post-operati...

BACKGROUND Stretch marks are a disfiguring skin condition of yet unknown etiology. OBJECTIVE We wanted to compare the functional disposition of dermal fibroblasts, derived from unaffected skin of patients with stretch marks and fibroblasts from normal age-matched subjects, and develop a test to predict predisposition to stretch mark development. METHODS Skin biopsies from normal subjects (N...

Atrial distension, which stimulates atrial natriuretic peptide secretion by atrial myocytes, also stretches nonmuscle cells. In a noncontracting in vitro preparation of combined right and left atria we demonstrated by electron microscopy that, at 37°C, transition from zero pressure to a physiological distending pressure of 5.1 mm Hg rapidly rendered atrial endocardial endothelium permeable to t...

Cytosolic Ca2+, [Ca]I , has a key role in intracellular signalling during excitation-contraction coupling (E-C coupling) in cardiac myocytes. The sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) is a main intracellular Ca2+ store and the Na+-Ca2+ exchanger (NaCaX) is a major mechanism to extrude Ca2+ for balancing the Ca2+ influx via L-type Ca2+ channels during excitation. Furthermore, [Ca]I also affects the config...

Structures consisting of cables and membranes have been of interest to engineers due to their higher ratio of strength to weight and lower cost compared to other structures. One of the challenges in such structures is presence of holes in membranes, which leads to non-uniform stress and strain distributions, even under uniform far-field deformations. One of the approaches suggested for controll...

Thiazolidinedione (TZD), a specific peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) agonist, was developed to control blood glucose in diabetes patients. However, several side effects were reported that increased the risk of heart failure. We used C2C12 myoblasts to investigate the role of PPARs and their transcriptional activity during myotube formation. The role of mechanical stretch dur...