BACKGROUND Traditional Oriental medicine is used in many Asian countries and involves herbal medicines, acupuncture, moxibustion, and cupping. We investigated the incidence and causes of hospital-acquired fever (HAF) and the characteristics of febrile inpatients in Oriental medical hospitals (OMHs). METHODS Patients hospitalized in two OMHs of a university medical institute in Seoul, Korea, w...

BACKGROUND Aristolochiae Fructus (AF) and honey-fried Aristolochiae Fructus (HAF) have been used in China for a long time as anti-tussive and expectorant drugs. Few clinical cases have been reported to be associated with the toxicity of AF and HAF, although relatively high amounts of aristolochic acids (AAs) have been found in them. Our previous experiments have verified from the chemical chang...

The high-order ambiguity function (HAF) was introduced for the estimation of polynomial-phase signals (PPS) embedded in noise. Since the HAF is a nonlinear operator, it suffers from noise-masking effects and from the appearance of undesired cross terms and, possibly, spurious harmonics in the presence of multicomponent (mc) signals. The product HAF (PHAF) was then proposed as a way to improve t...

OBJECTIVE Symptomatic disc degeneration develops from inflammatory reactions in the annulus fibrosus (AF). Although inflammatory mediators during annular inflammation have been studied, the roles of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their inhibitors have not been fully elucidated. In this study, we evaluated the production of MMPs and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase (TIMPs) during ann...

Most solid tumors and their metastases experience periods of low oxygen or hypoxia, which is of major clinical significance as it promotes both tumor progression and resistance to therapy. Critical mediators of the hypoxic response are the hypoxia-inducible factors HIF-1a and HIF-2a. The HIFs are nonredundant and regulate both overlapping and unique downstream target genes. Here, we describe a ...

Dirofilaria immitis is a filarial nematode causing infection and heartworm disease in dogs and other canids, cats, and occasionally in humans. Prevention with macrocyclic lactones (ML) is recommended during the mosquito transmission season. Recently, ML resistance has been reported. ABC-B transporter genes are thought to be involved in the mechanism of ML resistance in other nematodes. This stu...

Hypoxia is a characteristic feature of solid tumors, leading to malignant behavior. During this process, HIF family members (HIFs) and the NF-κB pathway are activated. In addition, the hypoxia-associated factor (HAF) is reported to participate in the regulation of HIFs. However, the precise relationship among HIFs, HAF and the NF-κB pathway in bladder cancer (BC) remains unknown. In the current...

Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have hyperandrogenemia and increased prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including elevated blood pressure. We recently characterized a hyperandrogenemic female rat (HAF) model of PCOS [chronic dihydrotestosterone (DHT) beginning at 4 wk of age] that exhibits similar characteristics as women with PCOS. In the present studies we test...

BACKGROUND To characterize and identify prognostic factors for 28-day mortality among patients with hospital-acquired fungemia (HAF) in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). METHODS A sub-analysis of a prospective, multicenter non-representative cohort study conducted in 162 ICUs in 24 countries. RESULTS Of the 1156 patients with hospital-acquired bloodstream infections (HA-BSI) included in the EU...

purpose: to evaluate the effect of human amniotic fluid (haf) on the growth of human corneal endothelial cells (hcecs) and to establish an in vitro method for the expansion of hcecs. methods: hcecs were cultured in dmem-f12 supplemented with 20% fetal bovine serum (fbs). confluent monolayer cultures were trypsinized and passaged using 20% fbs- or 10%, 20%, or 30% haf-containing media. cell prol...