Int J Med Sci
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Leukoaraiosis, microbleeds, and silent brain infarctions are phenotypes of small vessel disease. Leukoaraiosis is the most prevalent, and advanced periventricular leukoaraiosis is regarded as a strong predictor of cognitive dysfunction. Microbleeds and silent brain infarctions sometimes coexist with leukoaraiosis. This study aims to analyze the effects of microbleeds and silent brain infarctions on cognitive function of patients with advanced periventricular leukoaraiosis. ⋯ Microbleeds and silent brain infarctions were associated differently with cognitive impairment of patients with advanced periventricular leukoaraiosis. The effect of lobar microbleeds was the most significant.
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Tetraology of Fallot (TOF) is the most common form of cyanotic congenital heart disease and is a major cause of significant morbidity and mortality. Emerging evidence demonstrates that genetic risk factors are involved in the pathogenesis of TOF. However, TOF is genetically heterogeneous and the genetic defects responsible for TOF remain largely unclear. ⋯ The variations were absent in 400 control alleles and the altered amino acids were completely conserved evolutionarily. Functional analysis showed that the GATA5 mutants were associated with significantly decreased transcriptional activation compared with their wild-type counterpart. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the association of GATA5 loss-of-function mutations with TOF, suggesting potential implications for the early prophylaxis and allele-specific therapy of human TOF.
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The objective of this study was to compare the morphological and chemical composition of bone graft (BG) and coral graft (CG) as well as their osteogenic differentiation potential using rabbit mesenchymal stem cells (rMSCs) in vitro. SEM analysis of BG and CG revealed that the pores in these grafts were interconnected, and their micro-CT confirmed pore sizes in the range of 107-315 µm and 103-514 µm with a total porosity of 92% and 94%, respectively. EDS analysis indicated that the level of calcium in CG was relatively higher than that in BG. ⋯ Atomic force microscopy analysis showed CG had better surface roughness compared to BG. In addition, significantly higher levels of osteogenic differentiation markers, namely, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), Osteocalcin (OC) levels, and Osteonectin and Runx2, Integrin gene expression were detected in the CG cultures, when compared with those in the BG cultures. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that the osteogenic differentiation of rMSCs is relatively superior in coral graft than in bone graft culture system.
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Dracorhodin perchlorate (DP) was a synthetic analogue of the antimicrobial anthocyanin red pigment dracorhodin. It was reported that DP could induce apoptosis in human prostate cancer, human gastric tumor cells and human melanoma, but the cytotoxic effect of DP on human breast cancer was not investigated. This study would investigate whether DP was a candidate chemical of anti-human breast cancer. ⋯ Therefore DP was a candidate for anti-breast cancer, DP induced apoptosis of MCF-7 through mitochondrial pathway.
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Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4) gene have been detected and proved to associate with the incidence of rejection after transplantation. However, previous studies gained inconsistent results about the association between CTLA-4 +49 single-nucleotide polymorphism and susceptibility of allograft rejection. Therefore we sought to clarify whether CTLA-4 +49 SNP influences the incidence of acute rejection after liver transplantation in Chinese population. ⋯ This study suggests that CTLA-4 +49 SNP is not associated with acute rejection after liver transplantation in Chinese population.