Plos One
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Persimmon Leaf (PL), commonly consumed as herbal tea and traditional medicines, contains a variety of compounds that exert antioxidant, α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activity. However, little is known about the in vivo effects and underlying mechanisms of PL on hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia and hepatic steatosis in type 2 diabetes. Powered PL (5%, w/w) was supplemented with a normal diet to C57BL/KsJ-db/db mice for 5 weeks. ⋯ PL also led to a decrease in lipogenic transcriptional factor PPARγ as well as gene expression and activity of enzymes involved in lipogenesis, with a simultaneous increase in fecal lipids, which are seemingly attributable to the improved hyperlipidemia and hepatic steatosis and decreased hepatic fatty acid oxidation. Furthermore, PL ameliorated plasma and hepatic oxidative stress. Supplementation with PL may be an effective dietary strategy to improve type 2 diabetes accompanied by dyslipidemia and hepatic steatosis by partly modulating the activity or gene expression of enzymes related to antioxidant, glucose and lipid homeostasis.
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Systemic inflammatory response syndrome is a fatal disease because of multiple organ failure. Acute kidney injury is a serious complication of systemic inflammatory response syndrome and its genesis is still unclear posing a difficulty for an effective treatment. Aldose reductase (AR) inhibitor is recently found to suppress lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced cardiac failure and its lethality. We studied the effects of AR inhibitor on LPS-induced acute kidney injury and its mechanism. ⋯ AR inhibitor treatment ameliorated LPS-induced acute kidney injury, resulting in the lowered mortality.
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Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in China in 2002 and spread to other countries before brought under control. Because of a concern for reemergence or a deliberate release of the SARS coronavirus, vaccine development was initiated. Evaluations of an inactivated whole virus vaccine in ferrets and nonhuman primates and a virus-like-particle vaccine in mice induced protection against infection but challenged animals exhibited an immunopathologic-type lung disease. ⋯ These SARS-CoV vaccines all induced antibody and protection against infection with SARS-CoV. However, challenge of mice given any of the vaccines led to occurrence of Th2-type immunopathology suggesting hypersensitivity to SARS-CoV components was induced. Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.
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The increase in recent outbreaks and unpredictable changes of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 in birds and humans highlights the urgent need to develop a cross-protective H5N1 vaccine. We here report our development of a multiple-clade H5N1 influenza vaccine tested for immunogenicity and efficacy to confer cross-protection in an animal model. ⋯ Our findings demonstrated that the multiple-clade H5N1 influenza vaccine was able to elicit a cross-protective immune response to heterologous HPAI H5N1 virus, thus giving rise to a broadly cross-reactive vaccine to potential prevention use ahead of the strain-specific pandemic influenza vaccine in the event of an HPAI H5N1 influenza outbreak. Also, the multiple-clade adjuvanted vaccine could be useful in allowing timely initiation of vaccination against unknown pandemic virus.
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Ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) are midbrain structures known to be involved in mediating reward in rodents. Lateral habenula (LHb) is considered as a negative reward source and it is reported that stimulation of the LHb rapidly induces inhibition of firing in midbrain dopamine neurons. Interestingly, the phasic fall in LHb neuronal activity may follow the excitation of dopamine neurons in response to reward-predicting stimuli. ⋯ Single-pulse stimulation that was delivered to either midbrain structure triggered transient inhibition of firing of ∼90% of the LHb pain-activated neurons. However, tetanic stimulation of the VTA tended to evoke an elevation in neuronal firing rate. We conclude that LHb pain-activated neurons can receive diverse reward-related signals originating from midbrain dopaminergic structures, and thus participate in the regulation of the brain reward system via both positive and negative feedback mechanisms.