BACKGROUND Vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation is the key event of coronary artery disease. Mechanical forces, in particular, pulsatile stretch and platelet-derived growth factor, may play an important role. METHODS AND RESULTS Vascular smooth muscle cells were cultured from the media of human left descending coronary arteries obtained from organ donors using the explant method. To stud...

To further study the role of GPR54 signaling in the onset of primate puberty, we used the monkey to examine the ability of kisspeptin-10 to elicit the release of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) precociously, and we describe the expression of GPR54 and KiSS-1 in the hypothalamus during the peripubertal period. Agonadal juvenile male monkeys were implanted with a lateral cerebroventricular ...

The role of the endothelium in regulating transmural fluid filtration into the artery wall under pulsatile pressure and the effects of changes in pulsatile frequency on filtration have received little attention. Previous experiments (Alberding JP, Baldwin AL, Barton JK, and Wiley E. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 286: H1827-H1835, 2004) demonstrated significantly increased filtration after ini...

The rostral ventrolateral medulla (RVLM) is considered a major center for the regulation of sympathetic and cardiovascular activities. Several clinical studies have indicated a possible causal relationship between neurovascular contact of the left RVLM and essential hypertension, and some investigators have suggested that the left RVLM is more sensitive to pulsatile compression than the right R...

PURPOSE Cardiopulmonary bypass is still a major cause of lung injury and delay in pulmonary recovery after cardiac surgery. Although it has been shown that pulsatile flow induced by intra-aortic balloon pumping is beneficial for preserving lung function, it is not clear if the same beneficial effect can be accomplished with pulsatile flow generated in the extracorporeal circuit. Therefore, we i...

Pulsatile tinnitus is tinnitus that coincides with the patient's heartbeat. It constitutes a small portion of all tinnitus, but it is often the first or sole manifestation of a serious disease in the nervous system. Aneurysm of the internal carotid artery is known as a rare cause of pulsatile tinnitus and, in the main, aneurysms of the petrous portion have been reported as a cause of pulsatile ...

Enhancement of heat and mass transfer and decrease of energy dissipation are great necessities of the evolution of fluid flow devices. Utilizing oscillatory or pulsatile fluid flow for periodic disturbing of velocity and thermal boundary layers is one of the methods with exciting results. Passive methods of generating oscillatory flow are preferred to active methods because of simplicity, no ne...

External compression of extracranial/mediastinal vessels has not been reported as an etiology of pulsatile tinnitus. We present a case in which compression of extracranial vasculature led to long term pulsatile tinnitus which resolved completely with surgical resection of metastatic lymph nodes. This should be included in the list of differential diagnoses when dealing with any patient with a c...

OBJECTIVES We recently found low level of tumor suppressor programmed cell death 4 (PDCD4) associated with reduced atherosclerotic plaque area (unpublished). We investigated whether atheroprotective unidirectional pulsatile shear stress affects the expression of PDCD4 in endothelial cells. METHODS AND RESULTS En face co-immunostaining of the mouse aortic arch revealed a low level of PDCD4 in ...