purpose: to evaluate the effect of botulinum toxin-a as an alternate to surgery in acute complete sixth nerve palsy and to shorten the recovery period. methods: thirty patients with acute complete sixth nerve palsy received 1-10 units of botulinum toxin-a (dysport) injection in the medial rectus muscle within one month from the onset of palsy. toxin was injected directly into the muscle belly u...

The role of Rho proteins in lysophosphatidic acid (LPA)-mediated induction of cyclo-oxygenase-2 (Cox-2) was investigated in renal mesangial cells. Previous studies had shown that toxin B, an inhibitor of Rho, Rac and Cdc42, suppressed Cox-2 induction. A role for RhoA in pertussis toxin-sensitive LPA signalling was excluded with C3 transferase from Clostridium limosum, used as the fusion toxin C...

Certain microbial toxins are ADP-ribosyltransferases, acting on specific substrate proteins. Although these toxins have been of great utility in studies of cellular regulatory processes, a simple procedure to directly study toxin-catalyzed ADP-ribosylation in intact cells has not been described. Our approach was to use [2-3H]adenine to metabolically label the cellular NAD+ pool. Labeled protein...

Four strains of Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens did not degrade aflatoxin B1. Acetyl T-2 toxin, T-2 toxin, HT-2 toxin, deoxynivalenol, diacetoxyscirpenol, verrucarin A, zearalenone, and ochratoxin A did not affect the specific growth rate of B. fibrisolvens CE51 significantly, but all were degraded to greater or lesser extents. Breakdown products were produced as a result of deacetylation reactions.

The trichothecene mycotoxin T-2 toxin is a common contaminant of food and feed and is also present in processed cereal derived products. Cytotoxic effects of T-2 toxin and its main metabolite HT-2 toxin are already well described with apoptosis being a major mechanism of action. However, effects on the central nervous system were until now only reported rarely. In this study we investigated the...

De novo expression of the interleukin 2 receptor (IL-2R) is a critical and pivotal event in initiation of an immune response. Targeting the low-affinity IL-2-binding p55 subunit of the high-affinity IL-2R with the rat anti-mouse IgM monoclonal antibody M7/20 suppresses a variety of T-cell-mediated reactions, including transplant rejection, autoimmunity, and delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH). ...

Effects of elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum) volatile oil (GVO) and trichothecene (T2) toxin were studied in Swiss albino mice. The animals were 1) topically applied GVO, 2) topically applied T-2 toxin, 3) topically applied GVO followed by T-2 toxin (GVO/T-2), and 4) T-2 toxin application followed by GVO (T-2/GVO) on the right footpad. All animals were observed by Langerhans cell enumeratio...