BACKGROUND Few data describe the case burden of heart disease and cardiovascular risk factors relative to other conditions in urban Africans seeking primary health care. METHODS A clinical registry captured data on 1311 consecutive primary care patients (99% African) from two primary care clinics in Soweto, South Africa. Those with suspected sub-clinical heart disease had more advanced cardio...

10 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 12 1. The VEGF family 12 1.1. Growth factors 1.1.1. Vascular endothelial groth factor (VEGF-A) 12 1.1.2. VEGF-B 13 1.1.3. VEGF-C 13 1.1.4. VEGF-D 15 1.1.5. VEGF-E 16 1.2. The VEGF receptors 16 1.2.1. VEGFR-1 (or FLT1) 17 1.2.2. VEGFR-2 (KDR) 17 1.2.3. NEUROPILIN-1 (or receptor for VEGF165) 17 1.2.4. VEGFR-3 (or Flt4) 19 2. The Angiopoietin/Tie family 19 2.1. Growth f...

Background: Ischemic stroke recovery is poor in diabetic mellitus (DM). Vanadium compounds (vanadium) relieve DM signs, but their influences on cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury (I/RI) are inconclusive. Herein, the intensity of I/RI was inspected in vanadium-treated DM rats.Methods: Rats made diabetic with a single intravenous dose of streptozocin (39 mg/kg). Normal and DM rats used water or...

Pneumonia remains the number one cause of death from infectious diseases in Western Europe and the United States despite the introduction of potent broad-spectrum antibiotics. Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor is considered to improve host defense during infection and may be an effective adjunctive in the treatment of severe infections. We examined the efficacy of granulocyte colony-stimula...

Oxidation and adipose tissue uptake of dietary fat can be measured by adding fatty acid tracers to meals. These studies were conducted to measure between-study variability of these types of experiments and assess whether dietary fatty acids are handled differently in the follicular vs. luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. Healthy normal-weight men (n = 12) and women (n = 12) participated in the...

INTRODUCTION The respiratory effects (changes in pH and PaCO(2)) of carbon dioxide insufflation in thoracoscopic surgery in adult patients with pulmonary disease were not documented previously. METHODS In this observational study 21 patients scheduled for elective thoracoscopic surgery with one lung ventilation using a double lumen tube and intraoperative carbon dioxide insufflation were stud...