The chemical similarity between some synthetic agonists of vanilloid receptors, such as olvanil (N-vanillyl-cis-9-octadecenoamide), and the 'endocannabinoid' anandamide (arachidonoyl-ethanolamide, AEA), suggests possible interactions between the cannabinoid and vanilloid signalling systems. Here we report that olvanil is a stable and potent inhibitor of AEA facilitated transport into rat basoph...

â  background treatment of hemorrhoid disease is one of the most challenging fields in general surgery in which different methods are used to treat this condition. in this study, we compared the manometric and clinical results of three treatment methods for hemorrhoids. me t hod s a total of 150 patients with symptomatic grades ii or iii internal hemorrhoids were randomly assigned to three grou...

BACKGROUND The fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis is the leading etiological agent of paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM), a systemic granulomatous disease that typically affects the lungs. Cell wall components of P. brasiliensis interact with host cells and influence the pathogenesis of PCM. In yeast, many glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins are important in the initial contact wit...

active saponin constituents from Camellia (C.) sinensis (Theaceae), we have reported the isolation and structure elucidation of theasaponins A1—A5, C1, E1—E13, F1—F3, G1, G2, and H1, 2—6) assamsaponins A—I, and camelliasaponins B1 and C1 9) from the seeds of Japanese C. sinensis (L.) O. KUNTZE and Sri Lankan C. sinensis L. var. assamica PERRE, and foliatheasaponins I—V from the leaves of Japane...

IgE-mediated stimulation of rat basophilic leukemia (RBL-2H3) cells results in the secretion of histamine. Myosin immunoprecipitated from these cells shows an increase in the amount of radioactive phosphate incorporated into its heavy (200 kDa) and light (20 kDa) chains. In unstimulated cells two-dimensional mapping of tryptic peptides of the myosin light chain reveals one phosphopeptide contai...

The rat basophilic leukaemia (RBL) cell line has been widely used as a convenient model system to study regulated secretion in mast cells. Activation of these cells through the high-affinity receptor for IgE (Fcepsilon-RI) results in degranulation and the extracellular release of mediators. There is good evidence of a role for GTPases in mast cell degranulation, and a number of studies with pep...

Proteinase 3 (PR3) is a neutrophil serine protease stored in the azurophil granules of the promyelocyte and its successors. The protease has been identified as an autoantigen for anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibodies (ANCA) occurring in patients with Wegener's granulomatosis. To characterize the biosynthesis and processing of human PR3 in a transgenic cellular model, cDNA encoding human pr...