Deoxycholic acid (DCA) has been shown to promote proliferation of colonic carcinoma cells in many fundamental studies. However, no large-scale prospective clinical study providing direct evidence for an association of DCA with progress of colorectal tumor development in humans has been reported to date. To address this question, we conducted a two-step epidemiological study applying enzyme-link...

The nontoxic bile acid ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) is reported to be an anti-apoptotic agent with efficacy against a variety of death stimuli including the cytotoxic bile acid deoxycholic acid (DCA). To gain insight into this anti-apoptotic property, we tested UDCA for its ability to protect the colon carcinoma-derived cell line HCT116 against DCA-induced apoptosis. We found that UDCA could sup...

OBJECTIVE The use of the levels of hemoglobin A1c for the monitoring of glycemic control in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) is an accepted method of clinical usefulness. A study was performed to assess the relative costs of hemoglobin A1c determination by diagnostic testing at or near the site of patient care (point-of-care testing, POCT) and using the standard hemoglobin A1c analyzer. MET...

Ventricular fibrillation (VF) is an important cause of sudden cardiac arrest following myocardial infarction. Following resuscitation from VF, decreased cardiac contractile function is a common problem. During and following myocardial ischemia, decreased glucose oxidation, increased anaerobic glycolysis for cardiac energy production are harmful and energetically expensive. The objective of the ...

Apoptosis resistance is a hallmark of cancer cells. Typically, bile acids induce apoptosis. However during gastrointestinal (GI) tumorigenesis the cancer cells develop resistance to bile acid-induced cell death. To understand how bile acids induce apoptosis resistance we first need to identify the molecular pathways that initiate apoptosis in response to bile acid exposure. In this study we exa...

BACKGROUND Previous directional coronary atherectomy (DCA) trials have shown no significant reduction in angiographic restenosis, more in-hospital complications, and higher 1-year mortality than conventional balloon angioplasty (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty [PTCA]). DCA, however, has subsequently evolved toward a more "optimal" technique (larger devices, more extensive tissue ...

Overwhelming hypoxic acidosis due to poor tissue oxygen delivery from low cardiac output, pulmonary failure, and other causes has devastating effects postoperatively on patient outcome. Whereas conventional therapeutics often can not reverse the downward spiral of these patients, dichloroacetate (DCA) has been shown to be beneficial. This study investigated the metabolic and hemodynamic effects...

BACKGROUND C9, a newly in silico-designed inhibitor of microtubule dynamics induces G2/M arrest culminating in apoptosis. Dichloroacetate (DCA) inhibits pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase, an enzyme that promotes pyruvate entry into mitochondria. The use of antitumor drugs targeting different cancer features can be a more effective way to overcome drug resistance. METHODS The influence of C9 (130 ...

As one of the newest members in Artificial Immune Systems (AIS), the Dendritic Cell Algorithm (DCA) has been applied to a range of problems. These applications mainly belong to the field of anomaly detection. However, real-time detection, a new challenge to anomaly detection, requires improvement on the real-time capability of the DCA. To assess such capability, formal methods in the research o...

Recent studies suggested that lactate accumulation can be a signal for mitochondrial biogenesis in skeletal muscle. We investigated whether reductions in lactate concentrations in response to dichloroacetate (DCA), an activator of pyruvate dehydrogenase, attenuate mitochondrial adaptations after exercise training in mice. We first confirmed that DCA administration (200 mg/kg BW by i.p. injectio...