BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE For stroke prevention, patients with atrial fibrillation typically receive oral anticoagulation. The commonly used anticoagulant warfarin increases the risk of hemorrhagic transformation (HT) when a stroke occurs; tissue-type plasminogen activator treatment is therefore restricted in these patients. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that 12/15-lipoxygenase (1...

PURPOSE Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A and placental growth factor (PlGF) are members of a large group of homologous peptides identified as the VEGF family. Although VEGF-A is known to act as a potent angiogenic peptide in the retina, the vasoactive function of PlGF in this tissue is less well defined. This study has sought to elucidate the expression patterns and modulatory role o...

OBJECTIVE C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), which is produced by vascular endothelial cells, exhibits anti-proliferative and anti-inflammatory effects. Cytotoxic T-lymphocytes may be involved in vein graft disease. Attenuation of vein graft disease necessitates a remodelling of the arterialized vein towards a more contractile phenotype which is characterized, among other factors, by the calponi...

Enhanced cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) signaling may attenuate myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (I/R) and improve left ventricular (LV) functional recovery after myocardial infarction (MI). We investigated the cardioprotection afforded by inhaled NO (iNO), the phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5)-specific inhibitor tadalafil (TAD), or their combination (iNO+TAD) in C57Bl6J mice subjected to...

BACKGROUND Skeletal muscle wasting in acute lung injury (ALI) patients increases the morbidity and mortality associated with this critical illness. The contribution of laryngeal muscle wasting to these outcomes is unknown, though voice impairments and aspiration are common in intensive care unit (ICU) survivors. We evaluated the intrinsic laryngeal abductor (PCA, posterior cricoarytenoid), addu...

Diabetes causes changes in the myocardium, which are often called diabetic cardiomyopathy. This condition has been extensively investigated in animal models with high glucose levels. Nevertheless, it has not been investigated whether moderate hyperglycemia, in the absence of other features of metabolic syndrome, may also cause similar changes in the heart. The aim of the study was to assess cha...

Abstract Background Positron emission tomography (PET) using anti-1-amino-3-18fluorine-fluorocyclobutane-1-carboxylic acid (18F-fluciclovine) shows preferential glioma cell uptake with low activity in normal brain. Dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI may also be used to investigate regions of that do not show gadolinium-enhancement on post-contrast T1-weighted MR sequences (Gd-T1) and reflect t...

Chronic social stress has been associated with increased caloric intake and adiposity. These effects have been linked to stress induced changes in the secretion of ghrelin, a hormone that targets a number of brain regions to increase food intake and energy expenditure and promote increased body fat content. One of the brain sites targeted by ghrelin is the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (...

BACKGROUND Intestinal mucositis is one of the major troublesome side effects of anticancer chemotherapy leading to poor patient compliance. In this study we addressed the role of the novel apolipoprotein E (ApoE) COG 133 mimetic peptide in 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-challenged Swiss mice and IEC-6 cell monolayers. Experiments were also conducted in C57BL6J ApoE knock-out mice to assess the effects o...

PURPOSE The mechanisms that trigger retinal degeneration are not well understood, despite the availability of several animal models with different mutations. In the present report, the rd10 mouse, a model for retinitis pigmentosa (RP) that contains a mutation in the gene for PDE6β (Pde6b), is used to evaluate gliosis, as a marker for retinal stress, and cyclic AMP response element binding prote...