Dysfunction of cartilaginous endplates (CEP) is an important etiologic aspect of intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) because the endplate has nutritional and biomechanical functions in maintaining proper disc health. In this study, we investigated the regulatory effects of estrogen on degenerated human CEP cells and the involvement of miR-221 in these effects. Normal and degenerated human CE...

STUDY DESIGN A study of lumbar ligamentum flavum (LF). OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify LF hypertrophy related microRNAs (miRNAs) expression profile and to investigate the role of miRNAs in the development of LF hypertrophy in lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS). SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Although histologic and biologic literature on LF hypertrophy is available, the pathomechanism...

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To the Editor: Drexler et al. recently compared the sensitivity of the BinaxNOW Influenza A & B Rapid Test (BinaxNOW; Inverness Medical, Cologne, Germany) with that of a real-time reverse transcription–PCR (RT-PCR) assay specific for influenza A pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus (1). Of 1,838 clinical specimens tested, 221 were confirmed as positive for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 by RT-PCR. When 144 of thes...

School of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221 005, India Biological Science Group, Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani, 333 031, India Biotechnology Laboratory, Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, P O Jakhini-Shahanshahpur, Varanasi 221 305, India Laboratory of Plant Molecular Morphogenesis, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Nara Institute of Science an...

.....................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................3 List of figures ............................................................................................6 Introduction ........................................................................