BACKGROUND Organotypic tissue culture of adult rodent retina with an acute gene transfer that enables the efficient introduction of variable transgenes would greatly facilitate studies into retinas of adult rodents as animal models. However, it has been a difficult challenge to culture adult rodent retina. The purpose of this present study was to develop organotypic tissue culture of adult rode...

Autapses are connections between a neuron and itself. These connections are morphologically similar to "normal" synapses between two different neurons, and thus were long thought to have similar properties of synaptic transmission. However, this has not been directly tested. Here, using a micro-island culture assay in which we can define the number of interconnected cells, we directly compared ...

Introduction / objectives Our hospital’s blood culture contamination rate within adult wards reached 5.2% prior to the introduction of adult blood culture packs. In addition, during 2009 the hospital’s blood culture collection rate was 31 blood culture bottles per 1000 patient days. The aim of the study was to assess the impact of introducing a blood culture collection pack on the rate of blood...

BACKGROUND Recent evidence suggests that many individuals who chew khat recreationally also drink ethanol to offset the stimulating effect of khat. The objective of this study was to describe the separate and interactive effects of chronic ethanol and khat exposure on key projection neurons in the cortex and hippocampus of young adult male rats. METHODS Young adult male Sprague Dawley rats we...

neurotrauma is one of the main medical problems that affect considerable number of population especially young persons in all countries. neurotrauma not only is a serious threat for life but also creates various disabilities and consequently imposes large costs to society. following central nervous system (cns) injury, tissue damage occurs via primary and secondary mechanisms. despite many atte...

Human dental follicle cells (DFCs) derived from wisdom teeth are precursor cells for cementoblasts. In this study, we recognized that naïve DFCs express constitutively the early neural cell marker beta-III-tubulin. Interestingly, DFCs formed beta-III-tubulin-positive neurosphere-like cell clusters (NLCCs) on low-attachment cell culture dishes in serum-replacement medium (SRM). For a detailed ex...

The mechanism of selective and age-dependent motor neuron degeneration in human amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has not been defined and the role of glutathione (GSH) in association with motor neuron death remains largely unknown. A motor neuron-like cell culture system and a transgenic mouse model were used to study the effect of cellular GSH alteration on motor neuron cell death. Exposure...

apoptosis plays an important role in many pathological processes of the central nervous system. the neuroprotective effect of periodic fasting (pf) in contrast to severe fasting or starvation has been suggested. however, these beneficial effects seem to depend on the type and duration of the used feeding protocol. this study was designed to evaluate the effects of different pf protocols on the ...