TNF and Fas/FasL are vital components, not only in hepatocyte injury, but are also required for hepatocyte regeneration. Liver F4/80+Kupffer cells are classified into two subsets; resident radio-resistant CD68+cells with phagocytic and bactericidal activity, and recruited radio-sensitive CD11b+cells with cytokine-producing capacity. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of these Kup...

Backgrounds: Besides comprising high-density lipoprotein (HDL), apolipoprotein A1 (ApoA1) itself acts as an anti-atherogenic substance but its supplying routes and localization in the human coronary artery wall is poorly understood. The present study was performed to clarify supply route(s) and localization of ApoA1 and its relation to human coronary plaque morphology. Methods: Using 36 coronar...

BACKGROUND High baseline peritoneal solute transport rate is reportedly associated with reduced patient and technique survival in continuous peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. However, the determinants of baseline peritoneal solute transport rate remain uncertain. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between peritoneal local inflammation, angiogenesis and systemic inflammat...

BACKGROUND Several studies indicate that interstitial and intracapillary monocytes/macrophages (MO) represent a significant proportion of graft-infiltrating cells in renal allografts and that their presence may unfavourably affect clinical outcome. Much less is known about the role of MO in vascular rejection of transplanted kidneys. The aim of our study was to determine the cellular compositio...

Current therapies for glioblastoma are largely palliative, involving surgical resection followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which yield serious side effects and very rarely produce complete recovery. Curcumin, a food component, blocked brain tumor formation but failed to eliminate established brain tumors in vivo, probably because of its poor bioavailability. In the glioblastoma GL2...

HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) plasma levels are inversely related to cardiovascular disease risk. Previous studies have shown in animals and humans that HDL promotes regression of atherosclerosis. We hypothesized that this was related to an ability to promote the loss of monocyte-derived cells (CD68(+), primarily macrophages and macrophage foam cells) from plaques. To test this hypothesis, we used an...

Indeterminate cell histiocytosis (ICH) is a rare disorder in which histiocytic cells proliferate, expressing markers of both X- and non-X histiocytosis. Nevertheless, it is not totally clear if both types of markers are co-expressed by the same cell in this disorder, or on the contrary, the histiocytosis is made of two phenotypically different types of cells. Some recent reports seem to indicat...

OBJECTIVES A prospective, multicenter (18)fluorine-fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) imaging study was performed to estimate the correlations among arterial FDG uptake and atherosclerotic plaque biomarkers in patients with peripheral artery disease. BACKGROUND Inflammation within atherosclerotic plaques is associated with instability of...