BACKGROUND We assessed the renal protective effects of treatment with moderate exercise (EX), with EX plus olmesartan (OLS), with EX plus azelnidipine (AZN), and with the three together in a rat model of chronic renal failure (CRF). METHODS Male 5/6-nephrectomized Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats were divided into six groups according to the following treatments for: (i) no EX (C); (ii) moderate EX wi...

Flavan-3-ols are a subclass of flavonoids found in a variety of foods including teas. The effects of flavan-3-ols on the risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) have been investigated, generally focusing on tea catechins or individual flavan-3-ol rich foods, but there is little information on dietary flavan-3-ols intake and risk of MetS in population-based studies. In this cross-sectional study, we e...

A novel significant vector (SV) regression algorithm is proposed in this paper based on an analysis of Chen's orthogonal least squares (OLS) regression algorithm. The proposed regularized SV algorithm finds the significant vectors in a successive greedy process in which, compared to the classical OLS algorithm, the orthogonalization has been removed from the algorithm. The performance of the pr...

New myelin-forming oligodendrocytes (OLs) are generated in the mouse central nervous system during adulthood. These adult-born OLs might augment the existing population, contributing to neural plasticity, or else replace OLs that die in use (turnover). To distinguish between these alternatives, we induced genetic labeling of mature myelinating OLs in young adult mice and tracked their subsequen...

Oxidative mechanisms of injury are important in many neurological disorders, including hypoxic-ischemic brain damage. Cerebral palsy after preterm birth is hypothesized to be caused by hypoxic-ischemic injury of developing oligodendrocytes (OLs). Here we examined the developmental sensitivity of OLs to exogenous hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) with stage-specific rat oligodendrocyte cultures. We found...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether light drinking in pregnancy is linked to unfavourable developmental outcomes in children. DESIGN Prospective population-based cohort. SETTING UK. POPULATION Ten thousand five hundred and thirty-four 7-year-olds. METHODS Quasi-experimental using propensity score matching (PSM) to compare children born to light (up to 2 units per week) and non-drinkers. MAIN ...

X-ALD is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder where mutations in the ABCD1 gene result in clinically diverse phenotypes: the fatal disorder of cerebral childhood ALD (cALD) or a milder disorder of adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN). The various models used to study the pathobiology of X-ALD disease lack the appropriate presentation for different phenotypes of cALD vs AMN. This study demonstrates th...

Oligodendrocytes (OLs) are glial cells in the central nervous system (CNS), which produce myelin, a lipid-rich membrane that insulates neuronal axons. The main function ascribed to OLs is to regulate the speed of electric pulse transmission, and as such OLs have been widely considered as a single and discrete population. Nevertheless, OLs and their precursor cells (OPCs) throughout the CNS have...

Glutamate released from synaptic vesicles mediates excitatory neurotransmission by stimulating glutamate receptors. Glutamate transporters maintain low synaptic glutamate levels critical for this process, a role primarily attributed to astrocytes. Recently, vesicular release of glutamate from unmyelinated axons in the rat corpus callosum has been shown to elicit AMPA receptor-mediated currents ...