Introduction Minerals and trace elements such as zinc and copper have significant influence on development and growth of the fetus and newborn. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between low birth weight and maternal and neonatal zinc, copper levels. Materials and Methods This case – control study   was done from September 2006 to Sep 2007 consisted of 65 infants with b...

In this special issue about biofactors causing cognitive impairment, we present evidence for and discuss two such biofactors. One is excess copper, causing neuronal toxicity. The other is zinc deficiency, causing neuronal damage. We present evidence that Alzheimer's disease (AD) has become an epidemic in developed, but not undeveloped, countries and that the epidemic is a new disease phenomenon...

Iron, zinc, and copper play fundamental roles in eucaryotes and procaryotes, and their bioavailability regulates host-pathogen interactions. For intracellular pathogens, the source of metals is the cytoplasm of the host, which in turn manipulates intracellular metal traffic following pathogen recognition. It is established that iron is withheld from the pathogen-containing vacuole, whereas for ...

Objective: To investigate the serum concentrations of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn) and copper/zinc ratio (Cu/Zn) in patients with ovarian cancer and benign ovarian lesions. Methodology: The study included 50 patients, with ovarian cancer (malignant group) and 50 patients with benign ovarian lesions (benign group). After overnight fasting, blood samples were collected. The concentrations of Cu and Zn ...

Zinc is an essential nutrient because of its role in catalysis and in protein stabilization, but excess zinc is deleterious. We distinguished four nutritional zinc states in the alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii: toxic, replete, deficient, and limited. Growth is inhibited in zinc-limited and zinc-toxic cells relative to zinc-replete cells, whereas zinc deficiency is visually asymptomatic but disti...

abstract soil contamination with heavy metals is a serious problem in all over the world. soils are contaminated by many different sources of heavy metals. currently different methods are used by researchers for identifying heavy metal contamination. assessing soil metal toxicity with bacterial bioluminescence is one of the new techniques. in this study, different concentrations of zinc and cop...

Several chemicals, such as pesticides and heavy metals, are frequently encountered together in environment matrices, becoming a priority concerning the prevention of their emissions, well removal from environment. In this sense, work aimed to evaluate effectiveness permeable biosorbent bio-barrier reactor (PBR) on atrazine metals (copper zinc) aqueous solutions. The was built with bacterial bio...

An analytical procedure was proposed to estimate bioaccessibility of copper and zinc in Spirulina Pacifica tablets with respect to that of copper and zinc in gluconate complexes. Spirulina is the common name for diet supplements produced primarily from two species of cyanobacteria, namely Arthrospira platensis and Arthrospira maxima. Spirulina tablets are an excellent source of proteins, vitami...

Major copper proteins in the cytoplasm of plant cells are plastocyanin, copper/zinc superoxide dismutase, and cytochrome c oxidase. Under copper limited conditions, expression of copper/zinc superoxide dismutase is down-regulated and the protein is replaced by iron superoxide dismutase in chloroplasts. We present evidence that a micro-RNA, miR398, mediates this regulation in Arabidopsis thalian...