OBJECTIVE Although the association between alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels and risk of type 2 diabetes is well-studied, the effects of slightly increased ALT levels within the normal range on the temporal normal glucose profile remains poorly understood. METHODS A total of 322 Chinese subjects without impaired glucose tolerance or previous diagnoses of diabetes were recruited for study ...

Tuberculosis (TB) vaccine-induced airway luminal T cells (ALT) have recently been shown to be critical to host defense against pulmonary TB. However, the mechanisms that maintain memory ALT remain poorly understood. In particular, whether respiratory mucosal exposure to environmental agents such as endotoxin may regulate the size of vaccine-induced ALT population is still unclear. Using a murin...

A substantial number of human tumors (approximately 10%) are telomerase negative, and cells in such tumors have been proposed to maintain telomere length by the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway. Although details of the molecular mechanism of ALT are largely unknown, previous studies have shown that telomere homologous recombination (HR) is implicated in the ALT pathway. MUS81 ...

BACKGROUND To explore the gender difference of ALT elevation and its association with high hemoglobin levels. METHODS A cross-sectional study of 3547 adolescents (2005 females, mean age of 16.5?.3 years) who were negative for hepatitis B surface antigen received health checkups in 2006. Body mass index (BMI), levels of hemoglobin, ALT and cholesterol were measured. ALT >42 U/L was defined as ...

BACKGROUNDS Normal or elevated values of serum alanine aminotransferase level (ALT) vary in different studies mostly related to characteristics of reference population including age, gender, body mass index, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and metabolic syndrome prevalence. OBJECTIVES To measure upper normal limit (UNL) for serum ALT in an apparently healthy Iranian old population (...

The activation of a telomere maintenance mechanism (TMM) is indispensable for cellular immortalization, a hallmark of human cancer. Although most human cancers use telomerase as their TMM, some use an alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) mechanism. The latter especially include specific subtypes of soft tissue sarcomas where ALT occurs most often in tumors with complex karyotypes, astrocy...

Telomeres in cells that use the recombination-mediated alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway elicit a DNA damage response that is partly independent of telomere length. We therefore investigated whether ALT telomeres contain structural abnormalities that contribute to ALT activity. Here we used next generation sequencing to analyze the DNA content of ALT telomeres. We discovered th...

Cancer cells overcome replicative senescence by exploiting mechanisms of telomere elongation, a process often accomplished by reactivation of the enzyme telomerase. However, a subset of cancer cells lack telomerase activity and rely on the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway, a recombination-based mechanism of telomere elongation. Although the mechanisms regulating ALT are not fu...

or discontinue AZA/MTX had been made at consultant level, despite previous reports that transaminase elevations may be found in myositis [2–4] and other muscle diseases [4–6]. Transaminases are important intracellular components of metabolic function in many cells, including those of muscle, and elevated ALT levels may reflect transaminase leakage into the bloodstream, due to myofibrillar damag...

Telomere maintenance is a hallmark of cancer as it provides cancer cells with cellular immortality. A significant fraction of tumors uses the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway to elongate their telomeres and to gain an unlimited proliferation potential. Since the ALT pathway is unique to cancer cells, it represents a potentially valuable, currently unexploited target for anti-c...