There is a need to better understand the mechanism of airway hyper-reactivity, a key feature of asthma. Evidence suggests that sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) could be a major player in this phenomenon. The purpose of this work was to define the S1P receptor responsible for this phenomenon. We have studied, in the rat, the effect of two S1P synthetic receptor ligands, 2-amino-2-[2-(4-octylphenyl)...

Microparticles are membrane vesicles with pro-inflammatory properties. Circulating levels of microparticles have previously been found to be elevated in patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS). The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of in vivo treatment with microparticles, from patients with MetS and from healthy subjects (HS), on ex vivo vascular function in mice. Microparticles isol...

inhalational insulin was withdrawn from the market due to its potential to produce airway hyper-reactivity and bronchoconstriction. so the present study was designed to explore the acute effects of insulin on airway reactivity of guinea pigs and protective effects of salbutamol and beclomethasone against insulin induced airway hyper-responsiveness on isolated tracheal smooth muscle of guinea pi...

background: metabolic derangements in type 2 diabetes mellitus (t2dm) are likely to affect skeletal muscle contractile functions adversely. levo-carnitine improves muscle contractile functions in healthy humans and rats and corrects metabolic derangements in t2dm. therefore, it is likely to improve muscle contractile functions in t2dm as well. this study was designed to determine the effect of ...

Artemisia species, growing in almost all the northern hemisphere, is used in folk medicine of some countries as a remedy for hypertension. Since some cardiovascular disorders including hypertension are accompanied with altered responsiveness of vascular alpha-adrenergic receptors, the effect of aqueous Artemisia annua extract (100 and 200 mg kg-1) on a1-adrenoceptor agonist-induced contraction ...

background and objective: alzheimer’s disease (ad) is a multifactorial disease with debilitating consequences and few therapeutic strategies exist for it. with regard to antioxidant capacity and anti-β-amyloid polymerization potential of ellagic acid, this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of this substance on enhanced acetylcholinesterase reactivity in an experimental model of alzheim...

background and objectives: brucella melitensis infection is still a major health problem for human and cattle in developing countries and the middle east. materials and methods: in this study, in order to screen immunogenic candidate antigens for the development of a brucella subunit vaccine, a cytoplasmic protein (dnak) and an outer membrane protein (omp31) of b. melitensis were cloned, expres...

background: several studies reported the clinical features of ige-mediated hypersensitivity after ingestion of melon. melon allergy is a common ige-mediated fruit allergy in iran. this prompted us to investigate immunochemical and molecular properties of the major allergen in melon fruit, to compare the ige-binding capacity of the natural protein with the recombinant allergen, and to determine ...

Background: Chronic cardiac disease known as cirrhotic cardiomyopathy dysfunction in patients characterised by altered diastolic relaxation and/or impaired contractile reactivity to stress the absence of other recognised diseases.. Aim and objectives: The purpose study was evaluate tissue Doppler left ventricle's systolic characteristics performance with liver cirrhosis. Subjects methods: Al-Hu...