Background The contribution of methylglyoxal (MGO) and soluble receptor for advanced glycation end products (sRAGE) in the presence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is still unknown. We investigated whether serum MGO and sRAGE were related to the presence of disease activity in RA. Methods 80 patients with RA and 30 control subjects were included in a cross-sectional study. The severity of RA was...

O-glycosylation is one of the main types of the mammalian protein glycosylation; it occurs on the particular site of serine (S) or threonine (T). Several O-glycosylation site predictors have been developed. However, a need to get even better prediction tools remains. One challenge in training the classifiers is that the available datasets are highly imbalanced, which makes the classification ac...

Recently published news regarding food safety in China caused some worldwide disturbance and uncertainty among top athletes and their supporting staff. According to an article in The New York Times, a member of the U.S. Olympic team discovered oversized chicken breast when visiting a supermarket in Beijing, China. More interesting, the chicken contained considerable amounts of anabolic steroids...

Clearance of apoptotic cells is necessary for tissue development, homeostasis and resolution of inflammation. The uptake of apoptotic cells is initiated by an 'eat-me' signal, such as phosphatidylserine, on the cell surface and phagocytes recognize the signal by using specific receptors. In this study, we show that the soluble form of the receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) bind...

N-glycosylation is generally accepted to enhance the immunogenicity of antigens because of two main reasons. First, the attachment of glycans enables recognition by endocytic receptors like the mannose receptor (MR) and hence increased uptake by dendritic cells (DCs). Second, foreign glycans are postulated to be immunostimulatory and their recognition could induce DC activation. However, a dire...

Much data support a role for both low density lipoprotein (LDL) oxidation and glycation in atherogenesis. While alpha-tocopherol decreases the oxidative susceptibility of LDL, its role in decreasing LDL glycation is unclear. Hence we tested the effect of alpha-tocopherol both in vitro and in vivo on LDL oxidation and glycation. LDL was isolated after enrichment of plasma with alpha-tocopherol. ...

We measured advanced glycosylation end products in the mesenteric artery of 37 patients (ages 29-82 years), 34 of whom were nondiabetic. Samples of arterial tissue were obtained during bowel resectioning. Advanced glycosylation end products were measured as collagen-linked fluorescence (excitation wavelength 370 nm, emission wavelength 440 nm) after collagenase digestion of tissue samples. Mean...