Phyllanthus urinaria (P. urinaria), a widely used herb medicine, was tested for the anticancer effect in its water extract for the first time. The water extract of P. urinaria significantly decreased the number of Lewis lung carcinoma cells in a dose-and time-dependent manner as determined by MTT assay. However, the water extract of P. urinaria did not exert any cytotoxic effect on normal cells...

This study is part of an ongoing investigation of biomarkers in iron foundry workers exposed to polycyclic aromatic compounds. Foundry workers with the highest exposures had elevated levels of DNA adducts in their white blood cells in previous studies. The purpose of this study was to characterize the nature of DNA reactive chemicals in foundry air samples through incubating the foundry filter ...

We isolated two strains of Aspergillus flavus from a lung lesion and a skin lesion at autopsy from a patient with acute myelogenous leukemia complicated with fungal infection. An attempt was made to detect aflatoxins in culture filtrates of those isolates and the tissue extract of the lung lesion through the techniques of thin-layer chromatography (TLC), densitometry and high-performance liquid...

Pulmonary surfactant is a complex mixture, but clearly has one main component, dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine, or DPPC. The respiratory distress syndrome, RDS, a condition afflicting the baby born too early, is caused by a deficiency of pulmonary surfactant. When this was first realized, attempts were made to treat the condition by supplying DPPC, the main component of the missing surfactant. T...

BACKGROUND The diagnostic tools for bovine respiratory disease diagnosis include clinical inspection, thoracic auscultation, and ultrasonography. HYPOTHESIS Thoracic auscultation and clinical examination have limitations in the detection of lung consolidation in dairy calves. ANIMALS Prospective cohort of 106 preweaned calves from 13 different dairy herds (10 with a history of active bovine...

In the course of studying antinuclear antibodies in the rheumatic diseases, a new precipitin reaction (provisionally referred to as PM-1) was observed between calf thymus nuclear extract and polymyositis sera. Objectives of this study were to further define the immunologic nature of this reaction and to determine its specificity for polymyositis. Immunodiffusion studies using calf thymus nuclea...

Available surfactants for treatment of respiratory distress syndrome in newborn infants are derived from animal lungs, which limits supply and poses a danger of propagating infectious material. Poly-Val-->poly-Leu analogs of surfactant protein (SP)-C can be synthesized in large quantities and exhibit surface activity similar to SP-C. Here, activity of synthetic surfactants containing a poly-Leu...

Separation of surfactant subtypes is now commonly used as a parameter in assessing the amount of active compared with inactive material in various models of lung injury. The protein content, morphology and surface activity were determined of the heavy and light subtype isolated by differential centrifugation. Here we report the presence of surfactant proteins B and C in the heavy subtype but no...

A molecular film of pulmonary surfactant covers the hydrated lung epithelium to the air. We recently showed that the film exhibits a locally strongly variable electrical surface potential of up to several hundred millivolts. The potential arises from aligned molecular dipoles of the molecules. In the case of the complex structural organization of the phase-separated film of pulmonary surfactant...