BACKGROUND Since 2004, treatment of Mycobacterium ulcerans disease, or Buruli ulcer, has shifted from surgery to daily treatment with streptomycin (STR) + rifampin (RIF) for 8 weeks. For shortening treatment duration, we tested the potential of daily rifapentine (RPT), a long-acting rifamycin derivative, as a substitute for RIF. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS BALB/c mice were infected with M....

Short tandem repeats (STRs) are mutation-prone loci that span nearly 1% of the human genome. Previous studies have estimated the mutation rates of highly polymorphic STRs by using capillary electrophoresis and pedigree-based designs. Although this work has provided insights into the mutational dynamics of highly mutable STRs, the mutation rates of most others remain unknown. Here, we harnessed ...

1Department of Pediatrics and Medical Genetics, Medical University, Plovdiv Vasil Aprilov 15-A Str., Plovdiv 4002, Bulgaria 2University Hospital “St. George” Plovdiv, 66 Peshtersko Shuse Str., Plovdiv 4000, Bulgaria 3Psychiatric ward for active treatment of men, State Phsychiatry Hospital Pazardzhik, 28 Bolnichna Str. 4400 Pazardzhik, Bulgaria 4Department of Plant Phisyology and Molecular Biolo...

Abstract Psychostimulants such as amphetamine (AMPH) target dopamine (DA) neuron synapses to engender drug-induced plasticity. While DA neurons modulate the activity of striatal (Str) cholinergic interneurons (ChIs) with regional heterogeneity, how AMPH affects ChI has not been elucidated. Here, we applied quantitative fluorescence imaging approaches map dose-dependent effects a single dose on ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare various parameters between complete and incomplete ST-segment resolution (STR) patients' groups and to identify associates of STR in patients with acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) after primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) (primary outcome). MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 203 cons...

STR/N is an inbred strain of mice which is known to exhibit extreme polydipsia and polyuria. We previously found central administration of angiotensin II enhanced cardiovascular responses in STR/N mice than normal mice, suggesting that STR/N mice might exhibit different cardiovascular responses. Therefore, in this study, we investigated daily mean arterial blood pressure and heart rate, and cha...

Currently, mutations in three genes, namely rrs, rpsL, and gidB, encoding 16S rRNA, ribosomal protein S12, and 16S rRNA-specific methyltransferase, respectively, are considered to be involved in conferring resistance to streptomycin (STR) in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the spectrum and frequency of these mutations in M. tuberculosis clinical isolates, bo...

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease and a world-wide healthcare burden. Characterized by cartilage degradation, subchondral bone thickening and osteophyte formation, osteoarthritis inflicts much pain and suffering, for which there are currently no disease-modifying treatments available. Mouse models of osteoarthritis are proving critical in advancing our understanding of the underpin...

INTRODUCTION: The STR/ort strain of mouse, an inbred strain derived from STR/1N, has been reported to be an acceptable animal model for studying the development of osteoarthritis (OA) [1]. About 85% of all male mice spontaneously develop OA in the medial tibial plateau of the knee joint at 7-9 months of age. Importantly, histopathological changes in the lesions of the STR/ort mouse closely rese...

String tokenization using q-grams maps the string into a high-dimensional vector space model, in which the domain of each dimension is binary. The size of this space is exponential in the length of q-grams. For instance, q-grams of size three results in a space with 26 dimensions. The vector space model representation of a tokenized string (e.g., {‘str’, ‘tri’, ‘rin’, ‘ing’}) can be expressed b...