BACKGROUND Asthmatic adults from low-income urban neighborhoods have inferior health outcomes which in part may be due to barriers accessing care and with patient-provider communication. We adapted a patient advocate (PA) intervention to overcome these barriers. OBJECTIVE To conduct a pilot study to assess feasibility, acceptability and preliminary evidence of effectiveness. METHODS A prosp...

In China, the ethylacetate extract of the herb Tripterygium wilfordii Hook f (TWEE), containing the major active ingredient triptolide, is often used with favorable effect on rheumatoid arthritis patients, in alternation with the use of prednisone. The mechanism of this therapeutic effect, however, has not been completely delineated. In this study, we studied how TWEE and prednisone affect the ...

A significant minority of patients with COPD have favorable response to corticosteroid treatment. In addition, the benefit of corticosteroid treatment may be outweighed by the side effects. Long-term administration of inhaled steroids is a safe means of treatment. We hypothesized that treatment with high-dose inhaled budesonide would improve clinical symptoms and pulmonary function in subjects ...

Background: Noise pollution is considered as a stressful factor in every day’s life of the industrial world. The present study was designed to investigate the probable effects of different time exposure of noise stress on histomorphometric changes of adrenal gland, plasma cortisol and body weight of the rat. Methods: Sixty adult male Wistar rats were divided into two series of short time noise ...

background: sickle-cell anemia is characterized by defective hemoglobin synthesis with production of sickle hemoglobin. sickle red blood cells become deformed and rigid with difficulty to pass through narrow capillaries and frequent clotting and thrombosis leading to repetitive vascular occlusions and progressive organ damage. we conducted this work to study some adrenal functions using acth st...

The results of these experiments show, in short, that, by the method employed, adrenalin could neither be demonstrated in the specimen of blood, nor in either of the two specimens of malignant hypernephroma, nor in the specimen of metastatic tissue from the adrenal tumor which closely resembled a malignant hypernephroma. The results agree with those of Greer and Wells in showing that no adrenal...

Growth stimulating influences such as partial hepatectomy, chemical promoters and various carcinogens act mitogenically on the adrenal cortex of rats. The proliferative response of this 'non-target' tissue is probably due to systemically operating mechanisms which are independent of the organotropism of a substance. Therefore, this in vivo test appears useful for short-term evaluation of the pr...

The adrenal gland is a dynamic organ that undergoes constant cell turnover. This allows for rapid organ remodeling in response to the physiological demands of the HPA axis, which is controlled by proopiomelanocortin (POMC)-derived peptides, such as adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and N-Terminal peptides (N-POMC). In the rat adrenal cortex, POMC-derived peptides trigger a mitogenic effect, an...

The capabilities of porcine adrenal cortex mitochondria to oxidize glycerol-3-phosphate (GP) were studied. In comparison with bovine adrenal cortex mitochondria, porcine mitochondria oxidized GP about three times more actively (18.9 vs 6.1 nmol O(2)/min per mg protein in the presence of ADP) and the activity of mitochondrial glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase was about four times higher (33.4 v...