Schwann cells (SCs), the glial cells of the peripheral nervous system, cover synaptic terminals, allowing them to monitor and modulate neurotransmission. Disruption of glial coverage leads to axon degeneration and synapse loss. The cellular mechanisms that establish and maintain this coverage remain largely unknown. To address this, we labeled single SCs and performed time-lapse imaging experim...

In this paper, the performance of cellular systems in which the base-stations (BS) are randomly placed (so-called shotgun cellular system, SCS) is studied. Previous results for a uniform 2-dimensional distribution of BS are generalized to non-uniform placement of BS in any dimension. The carrier-tointerference ratio (CIR) and the carrier-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (CINR) are analyzed for ...

OBJECTIVES Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is increasingly used to treat various chronic pain conditions. One undetermined issue is to what extent SCS alters the processing of sensory information from the periphery, including those stimuli that are mediated by small-fiber populations. We aimed to investigate these possible changes using quantitative sensory testing (QST). METHODS Fourteen patie...

Evidence has accumulated that adult hematopoietic tissues and other organs contain a population of dormant stem cells (SCs) that are more primitive than other, already restricted, monopotent tissue-committed SCs (TCSCs). These observations raise several questions, such as the developmental origin of these cells, their true pluripotent or multipotent nature, which surface markers they express, h...

OBJECTIVE Painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (PDPN) is a common complication of diabetes mellitus. Unfortunately, pharmacological treatment is often partially effective or accompanied by unacceptable side effects, and new treatments are urgently needed. Small observational studies suggested that spinal cord stimulation (SCS) may have positive effects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We perfor...

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an alternative or adjunct therapy to treat chronic pain, a prevalent and clinically challenging condition. Although SCS has substantial clinical success, the therapy is still prone to failures, including lead breakage, lead migration, and poor pain relief. The goal of this study was to develop a computational model of SCS and use the model to compare activation ...

Adult bone marrow-derived very small embryonic-like stem cells (VSEL-SCs) exhibit a Sca-1(+)/Lin(-)/CD45(-) phenotype and can differentiate into various cell types, including cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells. We have previously reported that transplantation of a small number (1 × 10(6)) of freshly isolated, non-expanded VSEL-SCs into infarcted mouse hearts resulted in improved left ventricu...

Schwann cell (SC) transplantation is an attractive strategy for spinal cord injury (SCI). However, the efficacy of SC transplantation has been limited by the poor migratory ability of SCs in the astrocyte-rich central nervous system (CNS) environment and the inability to intermingle with the host astrocyte. In this study, we first magnetofected SCs by polysialyltransferase-functionalized superp...

OBJECTIVE We analyzed the cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of treating failed back-surgery syndrome using spinal cord stimulation (SCS) versus reoperation. MATERIALS AND METHODS A disinterested third party collected charge data for the first 42 patients in a randomized controlled crossover trial. We computed the difference in cost with regard to success (cost-effectiveness) and mean qualit...

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) applied to the dorsal aspect of the cranial thoracic cord imparts cardioprotection under conditions of neuronally dependent cardiac stress. This study investigated whether neuronally induced atrial arrhythmias can be modulated by SCS. In 16 anesthetized dogs with intact stellate ganglia and in five with bilateral stellectomy, trains of five electrical stimuli were ...