BACKGROUND/AIMS The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress protein, calreticulin (CRT), is required for the production of TGF-β-stimulated extracellular matrix (ECM) by fibroblasts. Since TGF-β regulates vascular fibroproliferative responses and collagen deposition, we investigated the effects of CRT knockdown on vascular smooth-muscle cell (VSMC) fibroproliferative responses and collagen deposition...

BACKGROUND Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) confers morbidity and mortality benefits to selected patients with heart failure. This systematic review examined effects of CRT in CKD patients (estimated GFR [eGFR] <60 ml/min per 1.73 m(2)). DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS MEDLINE and Scopus (from 1990 to December 2012) and conference proceedings abstracts were searched for r...

AIMS The Cardiac Resynchronization in Heart Failure (CARE-HF) study showed that cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) reduces mortality in HF patients with markers of dyssynchrony. Plasma N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) might predict which patients benefit most from CRT. We evaluated whether the prognostic value of NT-proBNP was influenced by CRT and the effects of CRT st...

OBJECTIVES It was the aim of this study to assess our institutional experience with definitive chemoradiation (CRT) versus induction chemotherapy followed by CRT with or without surgery (C-CRT/S) in esophageal cancer. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed 129 institutional patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer who had been treated by either CRT in analogy to the RTOG 8501 trial (n = ...

OBJECTIVE Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is introduced as a promising therapeutic option in heart failure (HF) patients with ventricular dyssynchrony.The challenge, however, is identifying the patients who are suitable candidates for this procedure. Fragmented QRS (fQRS) is associated with subendocardial fibrosis and myocardial scars. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the role of fra...

PURPOSE To investigate the associations of ERBB 2 overexpression with chemoradiation therapy (CRT) resistance and cancer-specific survival (CSS) in muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) patients treated with the CRT-based bladder-sparing protocol. METHODS AND MATERIALS From 1997 to 2012, 201 patients with cT2-4aN0M0 bladder cancer were treated with CRT (40 Gy with concurrent cisplatin) follow...

BACKGROUND The occurrence of cerebral infarction after intraarterial chemoradiotherapy (CRT) remains uncertain. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study using the Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC) database from 2010 to 2013. We performed a 1:4 propensity score-matched analysis between patients undergoing intraarterial or intravenous CRT, and determined the association between cer...

BACKGROUND Calreticulin (CRT) is major Ca 2+ -binding chaperone mainly resident in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen. Recently, it has been shown that non-ER CRT regulates a wide array of cellular responses. We previously found that CRT was up-regulated during hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) and this study was aimed to investigate whether CRT nuclear translocation aggravates ER stress (ERS)-asso...

The present study aimed to investigate whether skeletal muscle from whole body creatine transporter (CrT; SLC6A8) knockout mice (CrT(-/y)) actually contained creatine (Cr) and if so, whether this Cr could result from an up regulation of muscle Cr biosynthesis. Gastrocnemius muscle from CrT(-/y) and wild type (CrT(+/y)) mice were analyzed for ATP, Cr, Cr phosphate (CrP), and total Cr (TCr) conte...

background: cardiac resynchronization therapy (crt) is an effective treatment for patients with moderate to severe heart failure. however, 20-30% of patients remain non-responders to crt. we sought to identify which patients benefit the most from crt in regard to the etiology of heart failure. methods: eighty-three consecutive patients (62 men) who had a biventricular pacemaker inserted at tehr...