BACKGROUND Vascular inflammatory lesions from patients with giant-cell arteritis show a remarkable amount of neovascularization, but its clinical implications have never been investigated. METHODS AND RESULTS To assess the clinical relevance of neovascularization in giant-cell arteritis, angiogenesis was measured in temporal artery sections from 31 patients with biopsy-proven giant-cell arter...

Ischemic brain injury is a major problem associated with stroke. It has been increasingly recognized that acid-sensing ion channels (ASICs) contribute significantly to ischemic neuronal damage, but the underlying mechanism has remained elusive. Here, we show that extracellular spermine, one of the endogenous polyamines, exacerbates ischemic neuronal injury through sensitization of ASIC1a channe...

BACKGROUND Ischemic stroke is the combinatorial effect of many pathological processes including the loss of energy supplies, excessive intracellular calcium accumulation, oxidative stress, and inflammatory responses. The brain's ability to maintain energy demand through this process involves metabolism of glycogen, which is critical for release of stored glucose. However, regulation of glycogen...

BACKGROUND Individuals with TIA/stroke symptoms often do not seek urgent medical attention. We assessed the feasibility of identifying individuals searching for information on TIA/stroke symptoms online as a target for future interventions to encourage urgent evaluation and we evaluated the performance of a self-reported risk score to identify subjects with true TIA or stroke. METHODOLOGY/PRI...

Having recently described the injurious role of caspase-1-mediated production of the proinflammatory cytokine IL-18 in ischemic acute renal failure (ARF), we report here on the effect of the newly developed caspase inhibitor Quinoline-Val-Asp(Ome)-CH(2)-OPH (OPH-001) on caspase-1, IL-18, neutrophil infiltration, and renal function in ischemic ARF. C57BL/6 mice with ischemic ARF treated with OPH...

Pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) is one of the mitochondrial enzymes which regulate the glucose metabolism. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of the duration of cerebral ischemia on PDH activity and the metabolites. Cerebral ischemia was produced by bilateral common carotid artery occlusion in Mongolian Gerbils. 20-minute (1) and 60-minute ischemic groups (2) were made. PDH activ...

Increased blood-brain barrier (BBB) Na-K-Cl cotransporter activity appears to contribute to cerebral edema formation during ischemic stroke. We have shown previously that inhibition of BBB Na-K-Cl cotransporter activity reduces edema and infarct in the rat middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model of ischemic stroke. We have also shown that the BBB cotransporter is stimulated by the ischemi...

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have the ability to form new blood vessels and protect ischemic tissues from damage. We previously reported that EPCs with low activity of aldehyde dehydrogenase (Alde-Low EPCs) possess the greater ability to treat ischemic tissues compared with Alde-High EPCs. The expression level of the hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs), HIF-1α and HIF-2α, was found to be gr...

OBJECTIVES This study was designed to see if ischemic postconditioning could attenuate ischemic reperfusion injury of transplanted lungs recovered from non-heart-beating donors. MATERIALS AND METHODS Forty Sprague-Dawley rats were randomized into 2 groups: the control group and the ischemic postconditioning group, with 10 donor rats paired with 10 recipient rats in each group. Twenty rats und...