Around 20% of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) relapse due to failure to eradicate the disease. Current drug efficacy studies focus on reducing leukemia cell burden. However, if drugs have limited effects on leukemia-initiating cells (LIC), these cells may expand and eventually cause relapse. Parthenolide (PTL) has been shown to cause apoptosis of LIC in acute myeloid leukemia. ...

This paper reports a study of veri cation in the high-level design phase of operating system development in which both rigorous and formal veri cation are used, where the rigorous argument is used to determine a manageable formal proof to be carried out. A 2-sorted rst order temporal language is used to express several possible high-level designs and the required properties of an operating syst...

BACKGROUND Preterm labor (PTL) in women with intact membranes may be caused by developing chorioamnionitis. Fusobacterium displays the ability to cause chorioamnionitis in the presence of intact amniotic membrane. CASE We report 2 patients with severe Fusobacterium chorioamnionitis which resulted in premature termination of pregnancy. Both patients presented with PTL and intact membranes. Nei...

Abstract The vaginal microbiome undergoes dramatic shifts before and throughout pregnancy. Although the genetic environmental factors that regulate have yet to be fully elucidated, high-throughput sequencing has provided an unprecedented opportunity interrogate as a potential source of next-generation therapeutics. Accumulating data demonstrates health during pregnancy includes commensal bacter...

Preterm labour (PTL) is a leading cause of perinatal mortality and postnatal morbidity. Contractions of the uterine muscle (myometrium) that determine the onset of labour depend on the expression of contraction-associated proteins (CAPs, i.e. connexin43) regulated by dimeric AP-1 transcription factors. Here, we examined subcellular (by immunoblotting) and tissue expression (by immunohistochemis...

PURPOSE To quantitatively evaluate growth plates around the knees in adolescent soccer players utilizing the diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DWI). METHODS The knees and adjacent growth plates of eleven 14-year-old male soccer players were evaluated by MRI before (end of season's summer break) and after two months of intense soccer training. MRI evaluation was conducted in coronal plane by PD-F...

Leukemia stem cells (LSCs) are thought to play a central role in the pathogenesis of acute leukemia and likely contribute to both disease initiation and relapse. Therefore, identification of agents that target LSCs is an important consideration for the development of new therapies. To this end, we have previously demonstrated that the naturally-occurring compound parthenolide (PTL) can induce d...

BACKGROUND Preterm birth (PTB) is one of the most important unsolved problems in reproductive medicine. This study aims to evaluate several maternal risk factors and outcome of pregnancies who were admitted for preterm spontaneous uterine contractions (PSUC). METHODS From September 2007 to February 2009, 327 cases who were admitted for PSUC were retrospectively studied. They were classified a...

Since the controversies regarding the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and selective cyclo-oxygenase (COX)-2 antagonists for the treatment of preterm labour (PTL), more emphasis has been placed on investigating the terminal synthases involved in the production of prostaglandins (PGs) to allow more targeted therapy in PTL. Prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) is synthesized by one of...

Our aim was to compare maternal serum concentrations of interleukin(IL)-1alpha IL-1beta, IL-6 and IL-8 in pregnancies complicated by preterm labor (PTL), with the levels in healthy controls at comparable gestational age, and to determine if these assays have any value in the prediction of early-onset neonatal infection or histological chorioamnionitis. The study population consisted of 65 women...