BACKGROUND Pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) is a rare hereditary disorder characterized by progressive calcification and fragmentation of elastic fibers in connective tissues. PXE is caused by mutations in the ABCC6 gene, which encodes the membrane transporter multidrug resistance-associated protein 6. Chronic oxidative stress was recently suggested to play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of t...

Inflammation is the driving force in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and its link to oxidative stress and carcinogenesis has long been accepted. The antioxidant system of the intestinal mucosa in IBD is compromised resulting in increased oxidative injury. This defective antioxidant system may be the result of genetic variants in antioxidant genes, which can represent susceptibility factors for...

Glioma stem cells (GSCs) exhibit stem cell properties and high resistance to radiotherapy. The main aim of our study was to determine the roles of ROS in radioresistance and stemness of GSCs. We found that microRNA (miR)-153 was down-regulated and its target gene nuclear factor-erythroid 2-related factor-2 (Nrf-2) was up-regulated in GSCs compared with that of non-GSCs glioma cells. The enhance...

BACKGROUND Conventional risk factors for thoracic aortic aneurysm including dissection (TAA) are thought to include age, arteriosclerosis, and hypertension. In addition, evidence suggests that genetic factors play a role in the development of this condition. The purpose of the present study was to identify genetic variants that confer susceptibility to TAA in hypertensive subjects. METHODS St...

Glutathione peroxidase-1 (GPx1) is a pivotal intracellular antioxidant enzyme that enzymatically reduces hydrogen peroxide to water to limit its harmful effects. This study aims to identify a microRNA (miRNA) that targets GPx1 to maintain redox homeostasis. Dual luciferase assays combined with mutational analysis and immunoblotting were used to validate the bioinformatically predicted miRNAs. W...

Thalassemia is associated with low antioxidant enzyme deficiency especially glutathione peroxidase. GPX exists in 6 isomeric forms out of which GPX1 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism is found to be associated with Thalassemia major. In our study, the determination of the allelic frequency and phenotype of a common polymorphism in Se-dependent glutathione peroxidase 1 (GPX1) was observed in Thalass...

Material and methods A group of 50 newly diagnosed breast and/or ovarian cancer patients carrying BRCA1 mutation was analyzed by exon-by-exon sequencing of 3 genes (GPX1, GPX4, TXNRD2) coding selenoproteins. Simultaneously a nested case-control study of 39 women with breast cancer and 7 women with ovarian cancer (blood samples for all affected carriers were collected before treatment) and 92 co...

Lifelong physical inactivity is associated with morbidity in adulthood, possibly influenced by changes in gene and protein expressions occurring earlier in life. mRNA (Affymetrix gene array) and proteomic (2D-DIGE MALDI-TOF/MS) analyses were determined in cardiac tissue of young (3 months) and old (16 months) Sprague-Dawley rats housed with no access to physical activity (SED) versus an exercis...

BACKGROUND Prostate cancer is a leading public health burden worldwide, and in New Zealand it is the most commonly registered cancer and the third leading cause of cancer deaths among males. Genetic variability and its associations with diet, demographic and lifestyle factors could influence the risk of this disease. METHODS The single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within a group of antioxi...

The irreversible loss of cardiomyocytes due to oxidative stress is the main cause of heart dysfunction following ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury and ageing-induced cardiomyopathy. Here, we report that CUEDC2, a CUE domain-containing protein, plays a critical role in oxidative stress-induced cardiac injury. Cuedc2(-/-) cardiomyocytes exhibited a greater resistance to oxidative stress-induced c...