Many of the ichthyoses are associated with inherited disorders of lipid metabolism. These disorders have provided unique models to dissect physiologic processes in normal epidermis and the pathophysiology of more common scaling conditions. In most of these disorders, a permeability barrier abnormality "drives" pathophysiology through stimulation of epidermal hyperplasia. Among primary abnormali...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Menière disease and idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss can have overlapping clinical presentation and may have similar pathophysiology. Prior studies using postcontrast 3D-FLAIR MR imaging suggest abnormal blood-labyrinth barrier permeability in both conditions, but the 2 diseases have not been directly compared by using the same imaging techniques. We hypothesi...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Disruption of the blood-brain barrier has been proposed to be important in vascular cognitive impairment. Increased cerebrospinal fluid albumin and contrast-enhanced MRI provide supporting evidence, but quantification of the blood-brain barrier permeability in patients with vascular cognitive impairment is lacking. Therefore, we acquired dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI to q...

Refractory focal epilepsy following acute febrile encephalopathy, also called fever-induced refractory epileptic encephalopathy in school-aged children or febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome (FIRES), is a topic of great interest and is a newly described condition in Europe and Asia. In a recent review, Nabbout et al. termed this entity ‘‘acute encephalopathy with inflammation-mediated s...

Natalizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody against very late antigen-4 (VLA-4), inhibits the transmigration of immune cells across the bloodbrain barrier into the central nervous system (CNS). However, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is caused following natalizumab treatment in patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). The reason for higher PML prevalence i...

Local edema, a cardinal sign of inflammation associates closely with neutrophil emigration. Neutrophil emigration has been described to occur primarily through endothelial junctions (paracellular) and more rarely directly through endothelial cells (transcellular). Recently, we reported that unlike in wild-type (wt) mice, Mac-1-/- (CD11b) neutrophils predominantly emigrated transcellularly and w...

Transport of large proteins into the nucleus involves two events, binding of the cargo protein to a transport receptor in the cytoplasm and passage of the cargo-transporter complex through the selective permeability barrier of the nuclear pore complex. The permeability barrier is formed by largely disordered polypeptides, each containing a number of conserved hydrophobic phenylalanine-glycine (...

Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is one of the most devastating types of stroke. Here, we aim to demonstrate that electroacupuncture on Baihui (GV20) exerts neuroprotection for acute ICH possibly via the caveolin-1/matrix metalloproteinase/blood-brain barrier permeability pathway. The model of ICH was established by using collagenase VII. Rats were randomly divided into three groups: ...

A skin permeability barrier is essential for terrestrial animals, and its impairment causes several cutaneous disorders such as ichthyosis and atopic dermatitis. Although acylceramide is an important lipid for the skin permeability barrier, details of its production have yet to be determined, leaving the molecular mechanism of skin permeability barrier formation unclear. Here we identified the ...