The phenomenon of total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) was placed in the context of optical microscopy by Daniel Axelrod over three decades ago. TIRF microscopy exploits the properties of an evanescent electromagnetic field to optically section sample regions in the close vicinity of the substrate where the field is induced. The first applications in cell biology targeted investigation...

Background: Micronutrients deficiency is one of the most health problems in the world. Iron and zinc deficiency and their interaction with vitamin A are important, too. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of supplementation of iron and zinc, alone or combined, on vitamin A status of primary school children. Material and methods: The study was a randomized double-blind clinica...

The European Atherosclerosis Society (1) and the Expert Panel of the US National Cholesterol Education Program (2) have issued detailed guide values for recognition and management of hyperlipidaemia in adults. In these guidelines, the diagnosis of dyslipidaemia based on the measurements of total cholesterol, triacylglycerols, HDL and LDL cholesterol plays an important role. A prerequisite for t...

A simple and sensitive high performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry method has been evaluated for the assignment of clonidine hydrochloride in human plasma. The mobile phase composed of acetonitrile–water 60:40 (v/v), and 0.2% formic acid 20 µL of sample was chromatographically analyzed using a repacked ZORBAX-XDB-ODS C18 column (2.1 mm×30 m...

UNLABELLED [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and positron emission tomography (PET) may be used to examine changes in cerebral glucose metabolism in two physiological conditions. We proposed and evaluated a double injection-single session FDG method with biological constraints for this purpose. METHODS Simulated brain time-radioactivity curves (TACs) generated by using a plasma TAC from an actual...

Objective(s) Crocin bleaching assay (CBA) is a new method for determination of antioxidant capacity. In CBA, addition of hydrogen to the conjugated double bonds of crocin results in reduction of crocin and increase in the absorbance at 440 nm, which is considered as a measure of antioxidant potential. Here CBA method was set up using di-gentiobiosyl crocin or a-crocin from Iranian saffron. The...

The efficiencies of four different methods for the extraction of phospholipids (PLs) and lysophospholipids (LPLs) from human plasma samples were examined by comparing extraction recovery values using nanoflow liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (nLC-ESI-MS). For recovery measurements, six PL and six LPL standards of different head groups were spiked into a human plas...

BACKGROUND In-hospital hypovitaminosis C is highly prevalent but almost completely unrecognized. Medical awareness of this potentially important disorder is hindered by the inability of most hospital laboratories to determine plasma vitamin C concentrations. The availability of a simple, reliable method for analyzing plasma vitamin C could increase opportunities for routine plasma vitamin C ana...

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the Asp9Asn substitution and the T(-93)-->G mutation in the promoter of the lipoprotein lipase gene affect plasma lipid levels and thereby the risk of ischemic heart disease (IHD). We genotyped 9033 men and women from a general population sample and 940 patients with IHD. The frequency of both the G allele and the Asn9 allele in the general ...