Primary aldosteronism (PA) secondary to excessive and/or autonomous aldosterone secretion from the renin-angiotensin system accounts for ∼10% of cases of hypertension and is primarily caused by bilateral adrenal hyperplasia (BAH) or aldosterone-producing adenomas (APAs). Although the diagnosis has traditionally been supported by low serum potassium levels, normokalaemic and even normotensive fo...

BACKGROUND HIV-1 Protease Inhibitors, namely PIs, originally designed to inhibit HIV-1 aspartic protease, can modulate the immune response by mechanisms largely unknown, and independent from their activity on viral replication. Here, we analyzed the ability of PIs to interfere with differentiation program of monocytes toward dendritic cell (DCs) lineage, a key process in the inflammatory respon...

BACKGROUND Histidine kinases are receptors for sensing cellular and environmental signals, and in response to the appropriate cue they initiate phosphorelays that regulate the activity of response regulators. The Dictyostelium discoideum genome encodes 15 histidine kinases that function to regulate several processes during the multicellular developmental program, including the slug to culminati...

Congenital abnormalities of the kidney and urinary tract are a common cause of end-stage renal disease in children. Host and environment factors are implicated in the pathogenesis of aberrant renal development. However, direct evidence linking gene-environment interactions with congenital renal disease is lacking. We report an animal model of renal dysgenesis that is dependent on a defined gene...

BACKGROUND During peritoneal dialysis (PD), epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is likely involved in aberrant healing and progressive peritoneal fibrosis. Recently, EMT of the kidney was actively reversed into the opposite direction, into mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET), by treatment with bone morphogenic protein-7 (BMP-7). In this study, the potential for ex vivo interconversion o...

OBJECTIVE Transient, repetitive occlusion stimulates coronary collateral growth (CCG) in normal animals. Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) switch to synthetic phenotype early in CCG, then return to contractile phenotype. CCG is impaired in the metabolic syndrome. We determined whether impaired CCG was attributable to aberrant VSMC phenotypic modulation by miR-145-mediated mechanisms, and whe...

background and objectives: staphylococcus aureus is an important cause of nosocomial and community-acquired infections in every region of the world. clindamycin is one of the alternative agents used to treat s. aureus infections and accurate identification of clindamycin resistance is important to prevent therapeutic failure. unfortunately, inducible clindamycin resistance is not detected by st...

Abstract Background and Aims Gitelman syndrome is a salt-losing tubulopathy characterized by hypokalemic alkalosis hypomagnesemia. It caused homozygous recessive or compound heterozygous pathogenic variants in SLC12A3, which encodes the Na+-Cl− cotransporter (NCC). In up to 10% of patients with syndrome, current genetic techniques detect only one specific variant. This study aimed identify seco...

BackgroundSystemic mastocytosis is a hematological disease in which aberrant mast cells accumulate because of gain-of-function mutations the KIT receptor. Group 2 innate lymphoid (ILC2s) are effector type immune responses that also express and colocalize with at barrier tissue sites. In mouse models, cell-ILC2 crosstalk can drive local inflammation. However, possible role for ILC2s pathophysiol...