Effects of Estrogen Replacement Therapy on Lipid Peroxidation and Antioxidant Enzyme Activities of Ovariectomized and Ovariectomized-Diabetic Rats

Menopause and diabetes are conditions producing free radicals independently from each other. Estrogen replacement therapy which widely used in postmenopausal period has beneficial effects because of its antioxidant property. The study groups were as follows: ovariectomy (n=8), ovariectomy+17-östradiol (n=8), ovariectomy+diabetes (n=10) and ovariectomy+diabetes+17-östradiol (n=8). Diabetes was induced by streptozotocin (45 mg/kg i.p.) and the treatment with 17-östradiol (0.1 mg/kg/day) was started a week after ovariectomy. After–week long experimental period aortic and uterine tissues were collected from the animals and the malondialdehyde concentration, glutathione peroxidase and catalase activities were quantified. The treatment did not effect blood glucose concentrations, but increased plasma estradiol concentrations. Increased malondialdehyde concentrations were reduced by the treatment in aorta from diabetics and nondiabetics, but the treatment increased malondialdehyde concentrations in nondiabetic uterine while were reducing in diabetic uterine. The treatment also reduced the increased activities of catalase and glutathione peroxidase in aorta from diabetics and nondiabetics, on the other hand the treatment increased the activities of those enzymes in uterine from diabetics and nondiabetics. Our results suggested that estrogen acts as an antioxidant or prooxidant depending on the tissues

Co-movements of REIT indices with structural changes before and during the subprime mortgage crisis: evidence from Euro-Med markets

This paper examines the long-run relationships between the REIT indices of the UK, Turkey and Israel in the Euro-Med zone with that of MSCI US REIT Index by using weekly data over the period 2003Q3 through 2009Q3, which includes the latest US subprime mortgage crisis and its effects on global stock markets. Although our EG test results do not indicate a long-run relationship, after taking account of the structural changes by applying the GH test, we find a long-run interaction between the REIT indices of UK and Israel with that of the US. However, our results indicate the lack of co-movement between REIT index of Turkey with the US. In addition, our dynamic OLS test results indicate a perfect relationship between the UK and the US indices. Our findings show that international investors who make long-term investments can only gain from diversifying into the real estate market of Turkey among the involved markets in the Euro-Med zone

Uptake of genetic testing by the children of Lynch syndrome variant carriers across three generations

Many Lynch syndrome (LS) carriers remain unidentified, thus missing early cancer detection and prevention opportunities. Tested probands should inform their relatives about cancer risk and options for genetic counselling and predictive gene testing, but many fail to undergo testing. To assess predictive testing uptake and demographic factors influencing this decision in LS families, a cross-sectional registry-based cohort study utilizing the Finnish Lynch syndrome registry was undertaken. Tested LS variant probands (1184) had 2068 children divided among three generations: 660 parents and 1324 children (first), 445 and 667 (second), and 79 and 77 (third). Of children aged 418 years, 801 (67.4%), 146 (43.2%), and 5 (23.8%), respectively, were genetically tested. Together, 539 first-generation LS variant carriers had 2068 children and grandchildren (3.84 per carrier). Of the 1548 (2.87 per carrier) eligible children, 952 (61.5%) were tested (1.77 per carrier). In multivariate models, age (OR 1.08 per year; 95% CI 1.06-1.10), family gene (OR 2.83; 1.75-4.57 for MLH1 and 2.59; 1.47-4.56 for MSH2 compared with MSH6), one or more tested siblings (OR 6.60; 4.82-9.03), no siblings (OR 4.63; 2.64-8.10), and parent under endoscopic surveillance (OR 5.22; 2.41-11.31) were independent predictors of having genetic testing. Examples of parental adherence to regular surveillance and genetically tested siblings strongly influenced children at 50% risk of LS to undergo predictive gene testing. High numbers of untested, adult at-risk individuals exist even among well-established cohorts of known LS families with good adherence to endoscopic surveillance.Peer reviewe

Microparticles from patients with metabolic syndrome induce vascular hypo-reactivity via Fas/Fas-ligand pathway in mice

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The co-presence of deletion 7q, 20q and inversion 16 in therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia developed secondary to treatment of breast cancer with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and radiotherapy: a case report

Introduction. Therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia occurs as a complication of treatment with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunosuppressive agents or exposure to environmental carcinogens. Case presentation. We report a case of therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia in a 37-year-old Turkish woman in complete remission from breast cancer. Our patient presented to our facility with fatigue, fever, sore throat, peripheral lymphadenopathy, and moderate hepatosplenomegaly. On peripheral blood and bone marrow aspirate smears, monoblasts were present. Immunophenotypic analysis of the bone marrow showed expression of CD11b, CD13, CD14, CD15, CD33, CD34, CD45 and human leukocyte antigen-DR, findings compatible with the diagnosis of acute monoblastic leukemia (French-American-British classification M5a). Therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia developed three years after adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of an alkylating agent, cyclophosphamide and DNA topoisomerase II inhibitor, doxorubicin and adjuvant radiotherapy. Cytogenetic analysis revealed a 46, XX, deletion 7 (q22q34), deletion 20 (q11.2q13.1) karyotype in five out of 20 metaphases and inversion 16 was detected by fluorescence in situ hybridization. There was no response to chemotherapy (cytarabine and idarubicin, FLAG-IDA protocol, azacitidine) and our patient died in the 11th month after diagnosis. Conclusions: The median survival in therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia is shorter compared to de novo acute myeloid leukemia. Also, the response to therapy is poor. In therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia, complex karyotypes have been associated with abnormalities of chromosome 5, rather than 7. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia showing the co-presence of deletion 7q, 20q and the inversion 16 signal. © 2012 Yonal et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

A multiobjective model for passive portfolio management: an application on the S&P 100 index

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published in: “Journal of Business Economics and Management"; Volume 14, Issue 4, 2013; copyright Taylor & Francis; available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3846/16111699.2012.668859Index tracking seeks to minimize the unsystematic risk component by imitating the movements of a reference index. Partial index tracking only considers a subset of the stocks in the index, enabling a substantial cost reduction in comparison with full tracking. Nevertheless, when heterogeneous investment profiles are to be satisfied, traditional index tracking techniques may need different stocks to build the different portfolios. The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology that enables a fund s manager to satisfy different clients investment profiles but using in all cases the same subset of stocks, and considering not only one particular criterion but a compromise between several criteria. For this purpose we use a mathematical programming model that considers the tracking error variance, the excess return and the variance of the portfolio plus the curvature of the tracking frontier. The curvature is not defined for a particular portfolio, but for all the portfolios in the tracking frontier. This way funds managers can offer their clients a wide range of risk-return combinations just picking the appropriate portfolio in the frontier, all of these portfolios sharing the same shares but with different weights. An example of our proposal is applied on the S&P 100.García García, F.; Guijarro Martínez, F.; Moya Clemente, I. (2013). A multiobjective model for passive portfolio management: an application on the S&P 100 index. Journal of Business Economics and Management. 14(4):758-775. doi:10.3846/16111699.2012.668859S758775144Aktan, B., Korsakienė, R., & Smaliukienė, R. (2010). TIME‐VARYING VOLATILITY MODELLING OF BALTIC STOCK MARKETS. Journal of Business Economics and Management, 11(3), 511-532. doi:10.3846/jbem.2010.25Ballestero, E., & Romero, C. (1991). A theorem connecting utility function optimization and compromise programming. Operations Research Letters, 10(7), 421-427. doi:10.1016/0167-6377(91)90045-qBeasley, J. E. (1990). OR-Library: Distributing Test Problems by Electronic Mail. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 41(11), 1069-1072. doi:10.1057/jors.1990.166Beasley, J. E., Meade, N., & Chang, T.-J. (2003). An evolutionary heuristic for the index tracking problem. European Journal of Operational Research, 148(3), 621-643. doi:10.1016/s0377-2217(02)00425-3Canakgoz, N. A., & Beasley, J. E. (2009). Mixed-integer programming approaches for index tracking and enhanced indexation. European Journal of Operational Research, 196(1), 384-399. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2008.03.015Connor, G., & Leland, H. (1995). Cash Management for Index Tracking. Financial Analysts Journal, 51(6), 75-80. doi:10.2469/faj.v51.n6.1952Corielli, F., & Marcellino, M. (2006). Factor based index tracking. Journal of Banking & Finance, 30(8), 2215-2233. doi:10.1016/j.jbankfin.2005.07.012Derigs, U., & Nickel, N.-H. (2004). On a Local-Search Heuristic for a Class of Tracking Error Minimization Problems in Portfolio Management. Annals of Operations Research, 131(1-4), 45-77. doi:10.1023/b:anor.0000039512.98833.5aDose, C., & Cincotti, S. (2005). Clustering of financial time series with application to index and enhanced index tracking portfolio. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 355(1), 145-151. doi:10.1016/j.physa.2005.02.078Focardi, S. M., & Fabozzi 3, F. J. (2004). A methodology for index tracking based on time-series clustering. Quantitative Finance, 4(4), 417-425. doi:10.1080/14697680400008668Gaivoronski, A. A., Krylov, S., & van der Wijst, N. (2005). Optimal portfolio selection and dynamic benchmark tracking. European Journal of Operational Research, 163(1), 115-131. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2003.12.001Hallerbach, W. G., & Spronk, J. (2002). The relevance of MCDM for financial decisions. Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, 11(4-5), 187-195. doi:10.1002/mcda.328Jarrett, J. E., & Schilling, J. (2008). DAILY VARIATION AND PREDICTING STOCK MARKET RETURNS FOR THE FRANKFURTER BÖRSE (STOCK MARKET). Journal of Business Economics and Management, 9(3), 189-198. doi:10.3846/1611-1699.2008.9.189-198Roll, R. (1992). A Mean/Variance Analysis of Tracking Error. The Journal of Portfolio Management, 18(4), 13-22. doi:10.3905/jpm.1992.701922Rudolf, M., Wolter, H.-J., & Zimmermann, H. (1999). A linear model for tracking error minimization. Journal of Banking & Finance, 23(1), 85-103. doi:10.1016/s0378-4266(98)00076-4Ruiz-Torrubiano, R., & Suárez, A. (2008). A hybrid optimization approach to index tracking. Annals of Operations Research, 166(1), 57-71. doi:10.1007/s10479-008-0404-4Rutkauskas, A. V., & Stasytyte, V. (s. f.). Decision Making Strategies in Global Exchange and Capital Markets. Advances and Innovations in Systems, Computing Sciences and Software Engineering, 17-22. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6264-3_4Tabata, Y., & Takeda, E. (1995). Bicriteria Optimization Problem of Designing an Index Fund. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 46(8), 1023-1032. doi:10.1057/jors.1995.139Teresienė, D. (2009). LITHUANIAN STOCK MARKET ANALYSIS USING A SET OF GARCH MODELS. Journal of Business Economics and Management, 10(4), 349-360. doi:10.3846/1611-1699.2009.10.349-36

Novel Marine Phenazines as Potential Cancer Chemopreventive and Anti-Inflammatory Agents

Two new (1 and 2) and one known phenazine derivative (lavanducyanin, 3) were isolated and identified from the fermentation broth of a marine-derived Streptomyces sp. (strain CNS284). In mammalian cell culture studies, compounds 1, 2 and 3 inhibited TNF-α-induced NFκB activity (IC50 values of 4.1, 24.2, and 16.3 μM, respectively) and LPS-induced nitric oxide production (IC50 values of >48.6, 15.1, and 8.0 μM, respectively). PGE2 production was blocked with greater efficacy (IC50 values of 7.5, 0.89, and 0.63 μM, respectively), possibly due to inhibition of cyclooxygenases in addition to the expression of COX-2. Treatment of cultured HL-60 cells led to dose-dependent accumulation in the subG1 compartment of the cell cycle, as a result of apoptosis. These data provide greater insight on the biological potential of phenazine derivatives, and some guidance on how various substituents may alter potential anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer effects