Patients with IgA nephropathy exhibit high systemic PDGF-DD levels

Background. Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) is a central mediator of mesangioproliferative glomerulonephritis (GN). In experimental mesangioproliferative GN, PDGF-DD serum levels, unlike PDGF-BB, increased up to 1000-fold. Methods. We assessed disease activity in 72 patients with GN, established a novel PDGF-D ELISA and then determined their PDGF-DD levels. In parallel, we studied renal PDGF-DD mRNA expression by RT-PCR. Results. PDGF-DD serum levels in patients with IgA nephropathy (IgAN) were significantly higher (1.67 ± 0.45 ng/ml) and in patients with lupus nephritis significantly lower (0.66 ± 0.86 ng/ml) compared to healthy controls (1.17 ± 0.46 ng/ml), while patients with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, membranous GN and ANCA-positive vasculitis did not differ from controls. The subgroup of IgAN patients with elevated PDGF-DD levels (27% of samples) did not differ in their clinical features from those with normal PDGF-DD levels. In IgAN patients with repetitive PDGF-DD determinations, most exhibited only minor fluctuations of serum levels over time. Intrarenal PDGF-DD mRNA expression did not differ between controls and patients, suggesting an extrarenal source of the elevated PDGF-DD in IgAN. Conclusions. Serum PDGF-DD levels were specifically elevated in patients with IgAN, in particular in those with early disease, i.e. preserved renal function. Our data support the rationale for anti-PDGF-DD therapy in mesangioproliferative G

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The modern world is a complexly organized system, a space of global information technologies (IT). Information today is the main determinant of society, and the rapid development of IT, which penetrate into all spheres of our life, opens up completely new opportunities for social progress, as well as certain problems and challenges. Since information technologies are widely used in business, politics, and national development, they have become an attractive target for hacker attacks; as well as a very powerful tool which can threaten state's national security. This paper examines the issue of information technology and its role in homeland security protection, as well as the key problems associated with increasing their influence in the world

Data mining methods for the prediction of different forms of asthma

The article examines the diagnosis of bronchial asthma, cites the classification of the disease, proves the relevance of this research, and represents the result of primary data analysis by using a powerful tool for data analysis - Rapid Miner

Источник бесперебойного питания для телекоммуникационного оборудования

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