Diabetic conditions increase vascular reactivity to angiotensin II in several studies but there are scarce reports on cardiovascular effects of hypercaloric diet (HD) induced gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), so the objective of this work was to determine the effects of HD induced GDM on vascular responses. Angiotensin II as well as phenylephrine induced vascular contraction was tested in is...

Excessive sympathetic drive is a hallmark of chronic heart failure (HF). Disease progression can be correlated with plasma norepinephrine concentration. Renal function is also correlated with disease progression and prognosis. Because both the renal nerves and renin-angiotensin II system are activated in chronic HF we hypothesized that excessive renal sympathetic nerve activity decreases renal ...

The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) at PC6 on the hypertension and myocardial hypertrophy in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). Thirty SHRs were randomized into model, SHR + EA, and SHR + Sham EA group with WKY rats as normal control. EA was applied once a day in 8 consecutive weeks. The blood pressure (BP), cardiac function, and hypertrophy as well...

BACKGROUND To investigate the effects and potential mechanism of electroacupuncture intervention on expressions of Angiotensin II and its receptors-mediated signaling pathway in experimentally induced cerebral ischemia. METHODS Totally 126 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into control group, model group and EA group. The latter two were further divided into ten subgroups (n = 6) followi...

Targeted gene delivery, transfection efficiency, and toxicity concerns remain a challenge for effective gene therapy. In this study, we dimerized the HIV-1 TAT peptide and formulated a nanoparticle vector (dTAT NP) to leverage the efficiency of this cell-penetrating strategy for tumor-targeted gene delivery in the setting of intratracheal administration. Expression efficiency for dTAT NP-encaps...

AIMS The present study tested the hypothesis that fetal hypoxia adversely affects kidney development in fetal and offspring rats and alter the expression patterns of angiotensin II type 1 (AT1R) and type 2 (AT2R) receptors. METHODS Time-dated pregnant rats were divided between normoxic and hypoxic (10.5% O2 last period of gestation) groups. Protein expression, in the offspring, was determined...

Abstract Background Roughly one third of cases chronic heart failure (HF) are caused by genetic predisposition, metabolic stress and cardiac inflammation. Animal studies suggest that heart-reactive autoantibodies, most notably those directed against G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR), could also play a pathogenetic role in the disease. However, so far, causal link between humoral GPCR-autoimmun...