Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the major progressive neurological disorders, characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in pars compacta of the substantia nigra. The causes for this is the interactions between external toxins (which arise from environmental, dietary and life style factors) and internal toxins arising from normal metabolism, genetic and epigenetic (mitochondria, membr...

Considerable evidence has shown that elevated plasma or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) urate levels correlated with a reduced risk of Parkinson's disease (PD). Based on its anti-oxidative properties, urate might serve as one of promising neuroprotective candidates for PD. However, how urate is transported through cell membranes to exert its effects inside the cells in PD is largely unknown. To eluci...

BACKGROUND By virtue of their high net negative charge, glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans play pivotal roles in biologic processes such as cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, sequestration of growth factors, activation of chemokines and cytokines, and permselectivity of basement membranes. METHODS The present article reviews the putative roles of glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans in...

INTRODUCTION Our previous study revealed that anti-inflammatory cytokine gene polymorphisms increase the risk of spontaneous preterm delivery (PD) in a population of Polish women. Different genetic background of PD due to preterm premature rupture of membranes (pPROM) than PD without pPROM has been suggested. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the maternal carriage of...

Triple Negative Breast Cancers (TNBC) subtype is an aggressive disease with poor clinical outcome. The only treatment available is surgery followed by chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) is a trans-membrane protein expressed on a wide variety of cells including immune cells, epithelial and vascular endothelial cells. Recently, PD-1/PD-L1 pathway signaling was describ...

The allosteric enhancer PD 81,723, a 2-amino-3-benzoylthiophene derivative, has been shown to potentiate agonist binding to A1 adenosine receptors (A1AdoRs) and to enhance the functional effects of adenosine and adenosine analogs. The objective of this study was to determine whether the apparent agonist-independent effect of PD 81,723 observed in CHO cells stably expressing the recombinant huma...

INTRODUCTION For several years we have been studying the development of Pierce’s disease (PD) in grapevines. Our studies have been guided by a model of PD development that was proposed with our initial application for funding. The Model proposed several “steps” in disease development following introduction of the PD causal agent, the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa (Xf): Xf introduction to vessels...

Several observations have implicated oxidative stress and aggregation of the presynaptic protein-synuclein in the pathogenesis of PD.-Synuclein has been shown to have affinity for unsaturated fatty acids and membranes enriched in PUFAs, which are especially sensitive to oxidation under conditions of oxidative stress. One of the most important products of lipid oxidation is 4-hydroxynonenal (H...