In the context of the recent pandemic threat by the worldwide spread of H5N1 avian influenza, novel insights into the mechanism of ligand binding and interaction between various inhibitors (zanamivir – ZMV, oseltamivir – OTV, 2,3-didehydro-2-deoxy-N-acetylneuraminic acid – DANA, peramivir – PMV) and neuraminidases (NA) are of vital importance for the structure-based design of new anti-viral dru...

Receptors for the bacterial chemotactic peptide fMLP are implicated in inflammation and host defense against microbial infection. We investigated the expression and function of fMLPR in microglial cells, which share characteristics of mononuclear phagocytes and play an important role in proinflammatory responses in the CNS. The expression of the genes encoding formyl peptide receptor (FPR)1 and...

Vaginal microbicides hold great promise for the prevention of viral diseases like HIV, but the failure of several microbicide candidates in clinical trials has raised important questions regarding the parameters to be evaluated to determine in vivo efficacy in humans. Clinical trials of the candidate microbicides nonoxynol-9 (N9) and cellulose sulfate revealed an increase in HIV infection, vagi...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal adult-onset neurodegenerative disorder affecting motor neurons (MNs). Evidences indicate that ALS is a non-cell autonomous disease in which glial cells participate in both disease onset and progression. Exosomal transfer of mutant copper-zinc superoxide dismutase 1 (mSOD1) from cell-to-cell was suggested to contribute to disease dissemination. Data...

introduction: breast milk is a complete food for growing children until 6 months of age, and mothers, as the most important child health care, play a decisive role in their growth. so promoting  their attitude toward the benefits of breastfeeding ensures guarantee child health in the future. this study aimed to assess maternal knowledge and attitude of mashhad toward exclusive bmf in the first ...

This communication explores the effect of varying substituent bulk at the N9 position of the adenine moiety and its effect in dictating the structural aspects of silver-adenine frameworks. While adenine alone or 9-benzyl substituted ligand afforded mono and dinuclear dimeric entities, n-propyl substitution at the N9 position results in the formation of a metallaquartet. Longer n-alkyl chains (h...

A number of compounds have been reported to be specific inhibitors of protein kinases mediated by structural-based selectivity, but the development of specific inhibitors has not yet been addressed in plant science. Here we tested C2, C6, and N9-trisubstituted purines to determine the basic relationship between their chemical structure and inhibitory activity versus a plant mitogen-activated pr...

Gene silencing by siRNA (synthetic dsRNA of 21-25 nucleotides) is a well established biological tool in gene expression studies and has a promising therapeutic potential for difficult-to-treat diseases. Five fatty acids of various chain length and oxidation state (C12:0, C18:0, C18:1, C18:2, C22:1) were conjugated to the naturally occurring polyamine, spermine, and evaluated for siRNA delivery ...

P300, somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) and brainstem auditory evoked potential (BAEP) are widely used neurophysiological methods for objectively evaluating cognitive, somatosensory and brainstem auditory functions. We studied the P300, SEP and BAEP in 17 patients with chronic respiratory insufficiency (PaO2:58.2 +/- 7.0 mmHg; mean +/- SD) and 15 age-matched healthy subjects (PaO2: 84.4 +/- ...

PURPOSE While aberrant activation of microglial cells was evidently involved in neuroinflammation and neurotoxicity in the neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, objective of study was to address if activated microglias deliver their effect by releasing pro-neurotrophins. MATERIALS AND METHODS By in vitro culture of N9 and BV2 cell lines and lipopolysaccharide...