Effect of walking distance on the change in ankle-brachial pressure index in patients with intermittent claudication

Objectives:The ankle-brachial pressure index (ABPI) responses to different exercise intensities on a treadmill were evaluated to clarify the relationship between intermittent claudication and the haemodynamics in the leg.Patients and methods:Thirty patients with intermittent claudication (32 symptomatic legs) due to peripheral arterial occlusive disease were exercised on a treadmill to determine their pain-free walking distance, maximum walking distance (MWD) and recovery time. Each subject was exercised at 25% and 50% of the MWD to determine the effect of work intensity on the drop in ABPI, and the recovery time.Results:In the claudicating legs, 25% of the MWD resulted in almost the same reduction in ABPI as 50% of the MWD, and the MWD. In contrast, the ABPI in the asymptomatic legs (13) was significantly decreased in proportion to the walking distance. The recovery time increased linearly in both the groups, as the walking distance increased.Conclusion:The recovery time of the ABPI correlated well with the intensity of workload, while the drop in ABPI did not

The Retroperitoneum Protects Prosthetic Graft Material from Intraperitoneal Contamination: An Experimental Study

AbstractObjectivesTo evaluate the ability of the retroperitoneum to serve as a barrier, against bacterial contamination, between the peritoneal cavity to the retroperitoneal space.MethodsSeventy rats had a small piece of knitted Dacron graft placed in the retroperitoneal space and 106–109 colony forming unit (cfu) Enterococcus faecalis was injected into the peritoneal cavity. In half the retroperitoneal (RP) group, the retroperitoneum was preserved and in the remainder, the open peritoneal (OP) group, needle holes were created. Grafts were harvested after 1, 4, or 7 days and cultured for E. faecalis. A blood sample was collected from three rats in each group for culture before the graft was harvested.ResultsGraft infection did not develop in any rat injected with 106 or 107 cfu in the RP group, while seven out of the 10 graft cultures of the OP group grew E. faecalis (P=0.003). In rats injected with 108 or 109 cfu, five out of the 10 graft cultures in the RP group and eight out of 10 in the OP group grew E. faecalis. All blood cultures were negative when the injected bacterial count was 107 cfu or less. One out of the three blood cultures was positive at 108 cfu, and all were positive at 109 cfu.ConclusionsThese results suggest that an intact retroperitroneum acts as a protective barrier against intraperitoneal bacterial contamination, particularly when blood cultures are negative

Plasma metabolomics supports the use of long-duration cardiac arrest rodent model to study human disease by demonstrating similar metabolic alterations.

Cardiac arrest (CA) is a leading cause of death and there is a necessity for animal models that accurately represent human injury severity. We evaluated a rat model of severe CA injury by comparing plasma metabolic alterations to human patients. Plasma was obtained from adult human control and CA patients post-resuscitation, and from male Sprague-Dawley rats at baseline and after 20 min CA followed by 30 min cardiopulmonary bypass resuscitation. An untargeted metabolomics evaluation using UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS was performed for plasma metabolome comparison. Here we show the metabolic commonality between humans and our severe injury rat model, highlighting significant metabolic dysfunction as seen by similar alterations in (1) TCA cycle metabolites, (2) tryptophan and kynurenic acid metabolites, and (3) acylcarnitine, fatty acid, and phospholipid metabolites. With substantial interspecies metabolic similarity in post-resuscitation plasma, our long duration CA rat model metabolically replicates human disease and is a suitable model for translational CA research

Epicardial-derived adrenomedullin drives cardiac hyperplasia during embryogenesis.

BACKGROUND: Growth promoting signals from the epicardium are essential for driving myocardial proliferation during embryogenesis. In adults, these signals become reactivated following injury and promote angiogenesis and myocardial repair. Therefore, identification of such paracrine factors could lead to novel therapeutic strategies. The multi-functional peptide adrenomedullin (Adm 5 gene, AM 5 protein) is required for normal heart development. Moreover, elevated plasma AM following myocardial infarction offers beneficial cardioprotection and serves as a powerful diagnostic and prognostic indication of disease severity. RESULTS: Here, we developed a new model of Adm overexpression by stabilizing the Adm mRNA through gene-targeted replacement of the endogenous 30 untranslated region. As expected, Admhi/hi mice express three-times more AM than controls in multiple tissues, including the heart. Despite normal blood pressures, Admhi/hi mice unexpectedly showed significantly enlarged hearts due to increased cardiac hyperplasia during development. The targeting vector was designed to allow for reversion to wild-type levels by means of Cre-mediated modification. Using this approach, we demonstrate that AM derived from the epicardium, but not the myocardium or cardiac fibroblast, is responsible for driving cardiomyocyte hyperplasia. CONCLUSIONS: AM is produced by the epicardium and drives myocyte proliferation during development, thus representing a novel and clinically relevant factor potentially related to mechanisms of cardiac repair after injury

Ficus racemosa Stem Bark Extract: A Potent Antioxidant and a Probable Natural Radioprotector

Ethanol extract (FRE) and water extract (FRW) of Ficus racemosa (family: Moraceae) were subjected to free radical scavenging both by steady state and time resolved methods such as nanosecond pulse radiolysis and stopped-flow spectrophotometric analyses. FRE exhibited significantly higher steady state antioxidant activity than FRW. FRE exhibited concentration dependent DPPH, ABTS•−, hydroxyl radical and superoxide radical scavenging and inhibition of lipid peroxidation with IC50 comparable with tested standard compounds. In vitro radioprotective potential of FRE was studied using micronucleus assay in irradiated Chinese hamster lung fibroblast cells (V79). Pretreatment with different doses of FRE 1h prior to 2 Gy γ-radiation resulted in a significant (P < 0.001) decrease in the percentage of micronucleated binuclear V79 cells. Maximum radioprotection was observed at 20 μg/ml of FRE. The radioprotection was found to be significant (P < 0.01) when cells were treated with optimum dose of FRE (20 μg/ml) 1 h prior to 0.5, 1, 2, 3 and 4 Gy γ-irradiation compared to the respective radiation controls. The cytokinesis-block proliferative index indicated that FRE does not alter radiation induced cell cycle delay. Based on all these results we conclude that the ethanol extract of F. racemosa acts as a potent antioxidant and a probable radioprotector

Evaluation of phenolic contents and antioxidant activity of various solvent extracts of Sonchus asper (L.) Hill

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Sonchus asper </it>(SA) is traditionally used for the treatment of various ailments associated with liver, lungs and kidneys. This study was aimed to investigate the therapeutic potential of nonpolar (hexane, SAHE; ethyl acetate, SAEE and chloroform, SACE) and polar (methanol, SAME) crude extracts of the whole plant.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To achieve these goals, several parameters including free-radical (DPPH^•, ABTS^•+, H₂O₂and ^•OH) scavenging, iron chelating activity, scavenging of superoxide radicals, total flavonoids and total phenolic content (TPC) were examined.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The SA extracts presented a remarkable capacity to scavenge all the tested reactive species with IC₅₀values being found at the μg ⁄ ml level. The SAME was shown to have the highest TPCs while lowest IC₅₀values for the DPPH^•, ABTS^•+radical scavenging capacities and iron chelating scavenging efficiency, moreover, SAME had best activities in scavenging of superoxide radicals and hydrogen peroxide as well as potently scavenged the hydroxyl radicals.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest the potential of <it>S. asper </it>as a medicine against free-radical-associated oxidative damage.</p

Reconstruction of metabolic pathways for the cattle genome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Metabolic reconstruction of microbial, plant and animal genomes is a necessary step toward understanding the evolutionary origins of metabolism and species-specific adaptive traits. The aims of this study were to reconstruct conserved metabolic pathways in the cattle genome and to identify metabolic pathways with missing genes and proteins. The MetaCyc database and PathwayTools software suite were chosen for this work because they are widely used and easy to implement.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>An amalgamated cattle genome database was created using the NCBI and Ensembl cattle genome databases (based on build 3.1) as data sources. PathwayTools was used to create a cattle-specific pathway genome database, which was followed by comprehensive manual curation for the reconstruction of metabolic pathways. The curated database, CattleCyc 1.0, consists of 217 metabolic pathways. A total of 64 mammalian-specific metabolic pathways were modified from the reference pathways in MetaCyc, and two pathways previously identified but missing from MetaCyc were added. Comparative analysis of metabolic pathways revealed the absence of mammalian genes for 22 metabolic enzymes whose activity was reported in the literature. We also identified six human metabolic protein-coding genes for which the cattle ortholog is missing from the sequence assembly.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>CattleCyc is a powerful tool for understanding the biology of ruminants and other cetartiodactyl species. In addition, the approach used to develop CattleCyc provides a framework for the metabolic reconstruction of other newly sequenced mammalian genomes. It is clear that metabolic pathway analysis strongly reflects the quality of the underlying genome annotations. Thus, having well-annotated genomes from many mammalian species hosted in BioCyc will facilitate the comparative analysis of metabolic pathways among different species and a systems approach to comparative physiology.</p

GLADX: An Automated Approach to Analyze the Lineage-Specific Loss and Pseudogenization of Genes

A well-established ancestral gene can usually be found, in one or multiple copies, in different descendant species. Sometimes during the course of evolution, all the representatives of a well-established ancestral gene disappear in specific lineages; such gene losses may occur in the genome by deletion of a DNA fragment or by pseudogenization. The loss of an entire gene family in a given lineage may reflect an important phenomenon, and could be due either to adaptation, or to a relaxation of selection that leads to neutral evolution. Therefore, the lineage-specific gene loss analyses are important to improve the understanding of the evolutionary history of genes and genomes. In order to perform this kind of study from the increasing number of complete genome sequences available, we developed a unique new software module called GLADX in the DAGOBAH framework, based on a comparative genomic approach. The software is able to automatically detect, for all the species of a phylum, the presence/absence of a representative of a well-established ancestral gene, and by systematic steps of re-annotation, confirm losses, detect and analyze pseudogenes and find novel genes. The approach is based on the use of highly reliable gene phylogenies, of protein predictions and on the analysis of genomic mutations. All the evidence associated to evolutionary approach provides accurate information for building an overall view of the evolution of a given gene in a selected phylum. The reliability of GLADX has been successfully tested on a benchmark analysis of 14 reported cases. It is the first tool that is able to fully automatically study the lineage-specific losses and pseudogenizations. GLADX is available at http://ioda.univ-provence.fr/IodaSite/gladx/