BACKGROUND This study is aimed to evaluate the clinical significance of heart rate turbulence (HRT) parameters in predicting the prognosis in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). METHODS From June 2011 to December 2012, a total of 104 CHF patients and 30 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. We obtained a 24-hour Holter ECG recording to assess the HRT parameters, included turbul...

Pediatric high-grade gliomas represent 8-12% of all primary tumors of the nervous system in children. Five-year survival for these pediatric aggressive tumors is poor (15-35%) indicating the need to develop better treatments for pediatric high-grade gliomas. In this work we used SF188 and SJ-GBM2 cell lines to study the function of the ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal esterase L1 (UCHL1), a deubiqui...

Notch signalling is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism used by metazoans to control the specification of cell fates through local interactions between cells (Artavanis-Tsakonas et al., 1999). As ligand and receptor are membrane associated, signalling is triggered by direct interaction of adjacent cells. In general, the Notch receptor is widely distributed within a cell population, while the ...

Rationale: The embryonic epicardium plays a crucial role in the formation of the coronary vasculature and in myocardial development, yet the exact contribution of epicardium-derived cells (EPDCs) to the vascular and connective tissue of the heart, and the factors that regulate epicardial differentiation, are insufficiently understood. T he epicardium, the outermost layer of the heart, develops ...

BACKGROUND Angiotensin II (Ang II) is a major contributor to the development of heart failure. However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie this process remain elusive. Inadequate angiogenesis in the myocardium leads to a transition from cardiac hypertrophy to dysfunction, and our previous study showed that Ang II significantly impaired the angiogenesis response. The current stu...

pace, forging unsuspected connections with human cardiovascular physiology and disease. The translucent nature of the organism has facilitated large scale mutagenesis screens for diverse cardiovascular phenotypes (for a review, see Shin and Fishman, 2002), while the density Kenneth R. Chien1,3 and Eric N. Olson2,3 Institute of Molecular Medicine University of California, San Diego, School of Me...

Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) plays an important role in smooth muscle (SM) differentiation, but the downstream target genes regulating the differentiation process remain largely unknown. In this study, we identified olfactomedin 2 (Olfm2) as a novel regulator mediating SM differentiation. Olfm2 was induced during TGF-β-induced SM differentiation of human embryonic stem cell-derived mese...

Artery Disease: Right Idea, Wrong Gene Variant? To the Editor: Recent data reported by Lin et al1 suggest that coronary artery disease (CAD) is associated with an Asn363Ser variant in exon 2 of the glucocorticoid receptor gene (GRL). The study is based on the notion that a dysfunctional glucocorticoid receptor may add to the adverse health effects of excessive cortisol concentrations. In a prev...

Tel.+8615301516886 This study aims to investigate the effect of serum brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) level and heart rate turbulence (HRT) phenomena on changes in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients, and their roles in predicting the evaluation of recent cardiovascular event. According to clinical diagnosis and coronary artery angiography results, 102 patients were divided into three groups...

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress has a pivotal role in the pathogenesis and development of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN), the most common and debilitating complications of diabetes mellitus. There is accumulating evidence that Juglans regia L. (GRL) leaf extract, a rich source of phenolic components, has hypoglycemic and antioxidative properties. This study aimed to determine the protective e...