Recent work identifies the AKT kinase as a potential mediator of tumor expansion in multiple myeloma. The finding of PTEN mutations in several myeloma cell lines suggests that loss of PTEN function may be one mechanism by which AKT activity is increased in this disease. Because PTEN-deficient myeloma cells may have up-regulated activity of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), downstream of...

Clinical studies have identified traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a risk factor for the development of cocaine dependence. This claim is supported by our recent pre-clinical studies showing enhancement of the rewarding effects of cocaine in mice sustaining moderate controlled cortical impact (CCI) injury during adolescence. Here, we test the efficacy of dexamethasone, an anti-inflammatory cortic...

The mitigation of co-channel interference (CCI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) has been a major area of focus of researchers in wireless communications. An approach of interest separates CCI cancellation and ISI equalization in a slow frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel into two stages. A space-time filter reduces the CCI, followed by a Viterbi equalizer for ISI equalization. The c...

In this paper, system capacity of the reverse link of a wireless multimedia CDMA system with transmission power control is analysed for receivers with and without CCI cancellers. For N classes of users, system capacity is represented by a point in an N-dimensional space. It is shown that system capacity is improved considerably with CCI cancellers, that system capacity region is non-convex in g...

This study was designed to investigate the therapeutic effects of saffron (Crocus Sativus L) and its main constituent crocin on neuropathic pain behavioral responses induced by chronic constriction injury (CCI) in rats. Adult male Wistar rats (200 to 250 g) were randomly assigned into 5 groups: Sham + saline, CCI + saline, CCI+ saffron (30 mg/kg), CCI +crocin (15 mg/kg) and CCI + crocin (30 mg/...

This study describes the application of CCI (Control/Compensation Index) [3, 4] to a corpus of spontaneous Beijing Chinese. CCI is a modification of the PVI algorithm [8], devised to provide an improved representation of the rhythmic tendencies of natural languages. The CCI algorithm was previously applied to the modeling of Italian [3, 5]. The present findings refer to Beijing Chinese.

Release of large amounts adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a gliotransmitter, into the extracellular space by traumatic brain injury (TBI) is considered to activate microglia followed release inflammatory cytokines resulting in excessive response that induces secondary injury. The present study investigated whether antagonists ATP receptors (P2X4 and/or P2X7) on are beneficial for reducing post‑inj...

PURPOSE To analyze overall survival (OS), prostate cancer (PCa)-specific survival (PCaSS), and non-PCaSS according to the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) after radical prostatectomy (RP) for PCa. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data from 336 patients who had RP for PCa between 1992 and 2005 were analyzed. Data included age, preoperative prostate-specific antigen (PSA), prostate volume, clinical stage,...

A measure of comorbidity in dialysis patients must not only predict outcomes but also be reproducible and easy to obtain. Our primary purpose in the present study was to determine the inter-rater reliability of the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. Our secondary purpose was to evaluate the usefulness of annual rescoring of the CCI as a predictor of patient s...

BACKGROUND Comorbid conditions are highly prevalent among patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and index score is a predictor of mortality in dialysis patients. The aim of this study is to perform a population-based cohort study to investigate the survival rate by age and Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) in incident dialysis patients. METHODS Using the catastrophic illness registratio...