Ethanolic Extract of Garlic for Attenuation of Gentamicin-induced Nephrotoxicity in Wistar Rats

Introduction. Nephrotoxicity is a serious side effect of gentamicin and is believed to be related to reactive oxygen species in the kidney. This study was aimed to find out whether garlic preparation (Allium sativum L) has ameliorative effects on gentamicin nephrotoxicity. Materials and Methods. Fifty male Wistar rats were divided into 5 groups of 10 as follows: group 1, sham group (control); group 2 (positive control group), gentamicin for 10 days; group 3, garlic and gentamicin for 10 days; group 4, gentamicin for 10 days followed by garlic for 10 days; and group 5, gentamicin. for 10 days followed by saline solution for 10 days. Gentamicin, 10 mg/kg, and garlic extract, 20 mg/kg, were administered intraperitoneally. Serum creatinine and concentrations were measured and the kidneys were processed for histopathological examinations. All specimens were examined for morphologic parameters involving tubular cells. Results. Serum creatinine and BUN levels were significantly high in the gentamicin group (group 2) after the experiment. However, the levels of these parameters in group. 3 (co-treatment with gentamicin and garlic) were significantly lower than those in group 2 (P < .05). These parameters were also lower in group 4 (consecutive treatment with gentamicin and garlic), when compared with group 5 (gentamicin and saline). The pathology damage score was high for the gentamicin group. Postadministration of garlic after gentamicin treatment (group 4) or co-administration of garlic and gentamicin (group 3) significantly attenuated the damage score. Conclusions. Garlic has regenerative potential after tubular injury induced by gentamicin in animal models

Role of Mas receptor antagonist (A779) in renal hemodynamics in condition of blocked angiotensin II receptors in rats

The vasodilatory effect of angiotensin 1–7 (Ang 1-7) is exerted in the vascular bed via Mas receptor (MasR) gender dependently. However, the crosstalk between MasR and angiotensin II (Ang II) types 1 and 2 receptors (AT1R and AT2R) may change some actions of Ang 1-7 in renal circulation. In this study by blocking AT1R and AT2R, the role of MasR in kidney hemodynamics was described. In anaesthetized male and female Wistar rats, the effects of saline as vehicle and MasR blockade (A779) were tested on mean arterial pressure (MAP), renal perfusion pressure (RPP), renal blood flow (RBF), and renal vascular resistance (RVR) when both AT1R and AT2R were blocked by losartan and PD123319, respectively. In male rats, when AT1R and AT2R were blocked, there was a tendency for the increase in RBF/wet kidney tissue weight (RBF/KW) to be elevated by A779 as compared with the vehicle (P=0.08), and this was not the case in female rats. The impact of MasR on renal hemodynamics appears not to be sexual dimorphism either when Ang II receptors were blocked. It seems that co-blockade of all AT1R, AT2R, and MasR may alter RBF/ KW in male more than in female rats. These findings support a crosstalk between MasR and Ang II receptors in renal circulation

Context Driven Concept Based Image Retrieval

Several semantic image search schemes have been recently proposed to retrieve images from the web. However, the query context is regularly ignored in these techniques and hence, many of the returned images are not adequately relevant. In this paper, we make use of context to further confine the outcome of the semantic search engines. For this purpose, we propose a hybrid search engine which utilizes concept and context for retrieving precise results. In the proposed model, an ontology is exploited for annotating images and accomplishing search process in the semantic level. Furthermore, the query of the user is modified with the concepts available in the ontology. Next, we make use of search context of the user and augment the query with the information extracted from the user’s context to additionally eliminate irrelevant results. Experimental results show that the combination of concept and context is effective in retrieving and presenting the most relevant results to the user

The effect of the various doses of atorvastatin on renal tubular cells; an experimental study

Recent retrospective observational studies suggest that high-potency statin therapy might increase the risk of acute kidney injury, however data on this subject is scares. Objectives: This study, was designed to investigate the renal tubular cell effect of different doses of atorvastatin to detect the possible aggravation of renal function or morphology of the kidney. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study 24 male Wistar rats were designated into 4 equal groups and treated as follows. Control group received phosphate buffer as the vehicle of atorvastatin for 7 days. Groups 1, II and III received atorvastatin at doses of 10, 50 and 150 mg/kg daily for 7 days, then on the day 8, all rats were anesthetized using ketamine and the blood samples were collected for evaluation of creatinine (Cr) and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels and then all rats were sacrificed, then the animals’ kidneys were dissected out and histopathological studies were performed Results: Mean (±SD) of scores of injury to renal tubular cells in control group was 4.2 ±2.2 and in groups I, II and III were 6.44 ± 4.9, 15.4± 8.5 and 25.8 ± 12.7 respectively. Group III which received 150 mg/kg/day of atorvastatin had significant renal damage in comparison to control group (P < 0.001). There was no significant difference of renal injury score between control group with groups of I and II. Conclusions: In the present study we found, atorvastatin with a dose of 150 mg/kg/day for 7 days was nephrotoxic for rats, while lower doses at 10 mg/kg/day or 50 mg/kg/day for 7 days were not accompanied by renal injury. These findings imply further attention to the administration of higher doses of atorvastatin in clinical conditions

Ameliorative effects of metformin on renal histologic and biochemical alterations of gentamicin-induced renal toxicity in Wistar rats

Background: The aim of this study was to test the potential properties of metformin (MF) to protect the kidney from gentamicin (GM)-induced renal toxicity. Materials and Methods: In this preclinical study, 50 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into five groups of 10 rats in each. In the first group (group I), they were kept in the same condition as others without receiving drugs for 10 days. In group II, the rats were injected intraperitoneally with 100 mg/kg/day of GM for 10 consecutive days. Group III rats received 100 mg/kg/day MF orally for 10 days. In group IV, the rats received GM (100 mg/kg; intraperitoneally) for 10 days and 100 mg/kg/day MF orally for the next 10 days. In the last group (group V), the rats received a combination of GM 100 mg/kg/day intraperitoneally and MF 100 mg/kg/day orally for 10 days simultaneously. Serum blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine (Cr) values were measured and renal tissues of the animals were processed for light microscope examination. Results: The levels of BUN in groups II, IV, and V, and also the serum level of Cr in groups II and V were increased significantly after the experiment. Furthermore, post-treatment with MF or co-treatment with MF could prevent the elevation of serum BUN and Cr induced by GM and also attenuates the damage score (P < 0.05). Conclusions: MF may prevent or ameliorate GM-induced acute renal failure, and therefore it might be beneficial in patients under treatment with this medicine

Improving the efficiency of term weighting in set of dynamic documents

In real information systems, there are few static documents. On the other hand, there are too many documents that their content change during the time that could be considered as signals to improve the quality of information retrieval. Unfortunately, considering all these changes could be time-consuming. In this paper, a method has been proposed that the time of analyzing these changes could be reduced significantly. The main idea of this method is choosing a special part of changes that do not make effective changes in the quality of information retrieval; but it could be possible to reduce the analyzing time. To evaluate the proposed method, three different datasets selected from Wikipedia. Different factors have been assessed in term weighting and the effect of the proposed method investigated on these factors. The results of empirical experiments showed that the proposed method could keep the quality of retrieved information in an acceptable rate and reduce the documents\u2018 analysis time as a result

The hepatic response following infection with Listeria monocytogenes

In the present study, we investigated the liver specific response upon infection with L. monocytogenes, a model pathogen for Gram-positive infections over a period of 5days. We used whole genome microarray chips to determine the temporal transcriptome at five observation points. Relative mRNA levels were validated for a representative subset of genes by quantitative Real-Time PCR. In the analysis of these data we followed a strict methodology. The quality of microarray data was ensured by several measures, including quality control tools developed and optimized at our institution. The biological effects of differentially expressed genes were investigated and interpretation of these results was followed by confirmatory experiments. In conclusion, this work allows a unique insight into regulatory networks of several biological processes and interconnections following an infection with L. monocytogenes. Based on our results and by integration of known literature, LXR-&#945; and related transcription factors are proposed to be fundamental for the regulation of hepatic and subsequently systemic response to pathogens.In der vorliegenden Studie untersuchten wir die Leber-spezifische Antwort nach Infektion mit L. monocytogenes, ein Gram-positives Modell-Bakterium über einen Zeitraum von 5 Tagen hinweg. Dabei machten wir Gebrauch von whole genome microarrays, mit dessen Hilfe das transiente Transkriptom zu fünf verschiedenen Zeitpunkten bestimmt wurde. Relative mRNA-Veränderungen wurden anhand einer repräsentativen Auswahl von Genen mittels quantitativer Echtzeit-PCR validiert. Die Analyse gewonnener Daten folgte einer strikten Methodologie. Die Qualität der microarray Daten wurde durch bioinformatische Programme, die an unserem Institut enwickelt und optimiert wurden, gesichert. Basierend auf dem Expressionsmuster differenziell regulierter Gene wurden biologische Rückschlüsse gezogen, die in subsequenten Experimenten untersucht und validiert wurden. Zusammenfassend bietet diese Arbeit einen einzigartigen Einblick in regulatorische Netzwerke verschiedenster biologischer Funktionen und Interaktionen nach Infektion mit L. monocytogenes. Basierend auf diesen Resultaten und eingebettet in bekannte Literatur, stellt sich eine herausragende Rolle für LXR und verwandte Transkriptionsfaktoren bei der hepatischen und subsequent auch systemischen Immunantwort dar

Interference-aware multipath routing protocol for QoS improvement in event-driven wireless sensor networks

The existing multipath routing protocols for wireless sensor networks demonstrate the efficacy of traffic distribution over multiple paths to fulfill the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of different applications. However, the performance of these protocols is highly affected by the characteristics of the wireless channel and may be even inferior to the performance of single-path approaches. Specifically, when multiple adjacent paths are being used concurrently, the broadcast nature of wireless channels results in interpath interference which significantly degrades end-to-end throughput. In this paper, we propose a Low-Interference Energy-efficient Multipath Routing protocol (LIEMRO) to improve the QoS requirements of event-driven applications. In addition, in order to optimize resource utilization over the established paths, LIEMRO employs a quality-based load balancing algorithm to regulate the amount of traffic injected into the paths. The performance gain of LIEMRO compared to the ETX-based single-path routing protocol is 85, 80, and 25 in terms of data delivery ratio, end-to-end throughput, and network lifetime, respectively. Furthermore, the end-to-end latency is improved more than 60

Mas receptor antagonist (A799) alters the renal hemodynamics responses to angiotensin II administration after renal moderate ischemia/reperfusion in rats: gender related differences

Moderate renal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is one of the major causes of kidney failure. We examined the role of Mas receptor (MasR) antagonist (A779) alone and combined with angiotensin II (Ang II) type 2 receptor (AT2R) antagonist (PD123319) on renal hemodynamic responses to Ang II after moderate I/R in male and female rats. Anaesthetized Wistar rats underwent 30 min partial ischemia by reduction of renal perfusion pressure (RPP) and subjected to block vasodepressor receptors followed by Ang II (100 and 300 ng/kg/min) infusion. Mean arterial pressure (MAP), renal blood flow (RBF), and renal vascular resistance (RVR) responses were assessed during graded Ang II infusion at controlled RPP. Thirty min post reperfusion, the Ang II infusion reduced RBF and increased RVR in a dose-related fashion (P < 0.05). However, A779 alone or A779 plus PD123319 infusion increased the RBF and RVR responses to Ang II infusion significantly (P < 0.05) in female but not in the male rats. MasR antagonist altered the RBF and RVR responses to Ang II infusion in female, and these responses were not altered statistically in dual blockade of MasR and AT2R. These findings suggest the important role of Mas receptor in renal vascular response to Ang II in female rats after moderate I/R