background and objectives: rapid clinical manifestation/progression of the meningococcal meningitis and lacunae in conventional bacteriological test often encourages indiscriminate use of antibiotics much before the etiology is established. this study was planned to evaluate ctra pcr for rapid molecular detection. in addition, multiplex pcr and sequencing was done for serogroup prediction to pr...

Calcitonin inhibits both osteoclast formation and bone resorption, and is a primary treatment for patients with hypercalcemia and increased bone turnover. However, the clinical utility of calcitonin is limited because patients become refractory to calcitonin after several days (the calcitonin "escape phenomenon"). The molecular basis for calcitonin "escape" is unclear. To determine the regulato...

background: neisseria meninigitidis is one of the most frequently encountered microorganisms associated with central nervous system infections. the aim of this study was to evaluate a pcr-based assay for specific and rapid detection of n. meninigitidis in csf specimens.   methods : since april 2002 to july 2006, 130 csf specimens were collected from patients suspected of having bacterial mening...

Although estrogen is important in human skeletal homeostasis, the major target cell in bone is unknown. Estrogen receptors (ER) have been demonstrated in osteoblasts and bone marrow stromal cells, but their presence in osteoclasts remains controversial because completely pure preparations have not been available. We have examined expression of ER-alpha and ER-beta messenger RNA (mRNA) by RT-PCR...

introduction: chest x–ray is one of the most common method of imaging. cardio thoracic ratio ( ctr ) is one of the parameters of chest x–ray that is used for determining cardiac enlargement. echocardiography as compared to chest x–ray is expensive and all centers dont have it, but it can determine heart size, valvular diseases, ejection fraction, left ventricular hypertrophy (lvh), pericardial ...

Three touchdown enzyme time release (TETR)-PCR assays were used to amplify different DNA sequences in the variable regions of the 16S and 16S-23S spacer rRNA genes specific for Chlamydia trachomatis, Chlamydia pneumoniae, and Chlamydia psittaci as improved tests for sensitive diagnosis and rapid species differentiation. The TETR-PCR protocol used 60 cycles of amplification, which provided impro...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between an AluI RFLP of the calcitonin receptor (CTR) gene and quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parameters in Korean men, and the interaction with nutrition as a lifestyle factor. MATERIALS AND METHODS Broadband ultrasound attenuation, speed of sound and stiffness index of the calcaneus were measured using an ultrasound bone ...

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to evaluate whether there is a correlation between peripheral blood expression of angiogenic transcriptional factors/receptors and colorectal cancer (CRC). METHODS Eighty six blood samples collected from patients with CRC (N=42), adenomas and/or hyperplastic polyps(AP, N=30) and individuals without colon pathology (control group/CTR, N=14) were used for this ...

Early diagnosis of prostate cancer (PCa) is critical for the application of efficient treatment to PCa patients. However, the majority of PCas remains indolent from several months to several years before malignancy. Current diagnosis methods have limitations in their reliability and are inefficient in time cost. Thus, an efficient in vivo PCa cell xenograft model is highly desired for diagnosti...

Two distinct calcitonin (CT) receptor (CTR)-encoding cDNAs (designated GC-2 and GC-10) were cloned and characterized from giant cell tumor of bone (GCT). Both GC-2 and GC-10 differ structurally from the human ovarian cell CTR (o-hCTR) that we cloned previously, but differ from each other only by the presence (GC-10) or absence (GC-2) of a predicted 16-amino acid insert in the putative first int...