783 research outputs found
Intracellular Cholesterol Lowering as Novel Target for AntiāAtherosclerotic Therapy
Atherosclerosis and disorders associated with cardiovascular system remain the major problem of modern medicine and the leading cause of mortality in developed countries. According to the current knowledge, atherosclerosis development can begin early in life. Clinically silent earlyāstage lesions can be detected in a large population of young adults. Despite substantial progress in the recent years, therapy of atherosclerosis mostly remains limited to plasma lipid profile correction. Moreover, no therapy is currently available for the treatment of asymptomatic early stages of the disease. The existing synthetic drugs could not be used for this purpose, because of the unfavourable risk/benefit ratio and high cost of treatment, which has to be longālasting. In this regard, medications based on natural agents with antiāatherosclerotic activity may offer interesting possibilities. Current research should focus on detection and evaluation of such agents. One of the important tools for antiāatherosclerotic drug evaluation is a cellābased model, which allows measurement of intracellular lipid accumulation. Antiāatherosclerotic activity of various substances can therefore be evaluated by the decrease of intracellular lipid storage. In this chapter, we will discuss the development and application of cellular models based on primary culture of human arterial wall cells that are suitable for detection and measurement of antiāatherosclerotic activity of various substances. Using these models, several natural agents have been successfully evaluated, which led to the development of pharmaceutical products with antiāatherosclerotic activity based on botanicals
On a Search for Hidden Photon CDM by a Multi-Cathode Counter
We report on a new technique of a Multi-Cathode Counter (MCC) developed to
search for hidden photon (HP) cold dark matter (CDM) with a mass from 5 to 500
eV. The method is suggested in the assumption that HP-photon mixing causes
emission of single electrons from a metal cathode if the mass of hidden photon
is greater than a work function of the metal. The measured effect from HP
should be dependent on work function of the metal and on the structure of
electronic shells of the metal used as a cathode. Potentially this can be used
for a verification of the results obtained. Some preliminary results for the
upper limit for mixing parameter X have been obtained for HP with a mass from 5
eV to 10 keV as a pure illustration of the potential of this technique. The
efforts are continued to refine the procedure of data treatment and to improve
the work of MCC. A new detector with a more developed design is under
construction.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures; v.2: minor changes/corrections made, following
referee's recommendations; accepted for publication in "Advances in High
Energy Physics", open special issue. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1512.0467
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