Menstrual pain (dysmenorrhea) is one of the main complaints in clinics for women. The pain is often accompanied by other symptoms such as headache, nausea, constipation or diarrhea, urinary frequency, and vomiting which often leave the patients incapacitated for work or school for a few days. Dietary supplementation with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) has been shown to alleviate the menstru...

The effect of temperature on the ether content of the glycerophospholipids of Tetrahymena pyriformis W was examined. The only ether detected was 1-O-hexadecyl glycerol (alpha-chimyl alcohol). The data provide evidence that the class 1-O-alkyl-2-acyl-sn-glycero-3-(2-aminoethyl)-phosphate (1-alkyl PsE), in addition to the previously reported 1-O-alkyl-2-acyl-sn-glycero-3-(2-aminoethyl)-phosphonat...

To investigate the underlying mechanisms of C18 fatty acids (stearic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid) on mast cells, we measured the effect of C18 fatty acids on intracellular Ca(2+) mobilization and histamine release in RBL-2H3 mast cells. Stearic acid rapidly increased initial peak of intracellular Ca(2+) mobilization, whereas linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid gradually ...

Abnormal fetal and infant growth have increasingly been correlated with adult onset cardiovascular disease. To date, there is little known about the lipid fatty acid profiles in infant cardiovascular tissue. Therefore, we analysed total lipid fatty acids from thoracic and abdominal aorta intima and media from 24 normally grown sudden infant death syndrome cases. Aorta from small for gestational...

Gamma-linolenic acid (gamma-linolenic acid, GLA; C18:3 Delta(6, 9, 12)) belongs to the omega-6 family and exists primarily in several plant oils, such as evening primrose oil, blackcurrant oil, and borage oil. Delta(6)-desaturase is a key enzyme involved in the synthesis of GLA. There have been no previous reports on the genes encoding Delta(6)-desaturase in blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum L.). In t...

Interest in oilseeds and oilseed crop production has recently been heightened by the growing potential for biofuels. Traditional oil seed crops, such as sunflower (Helianthus annuus L., Asteraceae), flax (Linum usitatissimum L., Linaceae), and more recently canola (Brassica napus L., Brassicaceae) have become crops of major importance in the region. The key to their production success is multi-...

disadvantages such as indeterminate inflorescence and high seed shattering during ripening are significant restrictions to introduce evening primrose as a commercial medicinal plant. following to the last works, a pot experiment was conducted to clarify the influence of defoliation before harvest on the seed yield, oil and gla (gamma-linolenic acid) percentage of evening primrose growing under ...