Even after many years of being studied, the cause of MS is still unknown. It is believed that the disease is probably triggered by a combination of factors that are inherited and are present in the environment. The most likely environmental factor seems to be a virus or other source of infection. However, a specific infection has not yet been identified. In this issue of Neurology, Riise and co...

Joint European Torus discharges which demonstrate the critical role the safety factor profile, q, can play in the formation of internal transport barriers (ITB) are examined. In these discharges, the target parameters, including the E x B flows, were kept virtually the same, except for the q profile. In a discharge with a nonmonotonic q, an ITB was triggered whereas a discharge with monotone q ...

Osteoclast activation is a critical cellular process for pathological bone resorption, such as erosions in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or generalized bone loss. Among many factors triggering excessive osteoclast activity, cytokines such as IL-1 or tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha play a central role. New members of the TNF receptor ligand family (namely receptor activator of nuclear factor-kapp...

Gout is a chronic rheumatic disease resulting from accumulation of monosodium urate crystals in tissues. The most important risk factor for the disease is hyperuricaemia. Precipitation of uric acid in the joint in the form of monosodium urate crystals is the main factor responsible for triggering attacks of arthritis. Tophi occur as a result of urate crystals that precipitate into joints and su...

The individual food-demand behavior of juvenile European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax, L.) reared in groups under self-feeding conditions was investigated. The triggering activity on self-feeder, i.e. index of the food-demand activity, agonistic interactions and territorial behavior were monitored for periods of 42 to 68 days in six groups of 50 fish. The specific growth rate was calculated a...

Forty-year-old man was admitted to emergency department with complains of chest pain and dispnea after exposure the pepper gas that sprayed to environment during a social event. Physical examination and electrocardiogram was revealed acute myocardial infarction.

An early and essential event in the protective immune response against most viruses and protozoa is the production of interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma). In contrast, during infection with African trypanosomes, protozoan parasites that cause human sleeping sickness, the increased levels of IFN-gamma do not correlate with a protective response. We showed previously that African trypanosomes express a ...

Fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) is considered to be a bona fide oncogenic factor, although results from our group and others call this into question. Here, we report that exogenous recombinant FGF2 irreversibly inhibits proliferation by inducing senescence in Ras-dependent malignant mouse cells, but not in immortalized nontumorigenic cell lines. We report the following findings in K-Ras-depen...