BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Astrocytes, neurons, and microvessels together form a neurovascular unit allowing blood flow to match neuronal activity. Adenosine diphosphate (ADP) is an important signaling molecule in the brain, and dilation in response to ADP is astrocyte-dependent in rats and newborn pigs. Carbon monoxide (CO), produced endogenously by catabolism of heme to CO, iron, and biliverdin v...

BACKGROUND Alterations in intravascular pressure can affect vascular function and the morphological properties of arteries. Although it has been shown that a transient elevation of blood pressure impairs endothelium-dependent dilation in small arteries, the vascular dilation responses during high intravascular pressure have not yet been investigated. METHODS AND RESULTS Using pressure myograp...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of balloon dilation for the treatment of nasopharyngeal stenosis in cats. METHODS The medical records of seven cats with nasopharyngeal stenosis treated with balloon dilation were reviewed. The most common presenting clinical signs included upper airway noise, sneezing, nasal and/or ocular discharge. All seven cats were ...

Studies on cognitive effort have shown that pupil dilation is a reliable indicator of memory load. However, it is conceivable that there are other sources of effort involved in memory that also affect pupil dilation. One of these is the ease with which an item can be retrieved from memory. Here, we present the results of an experiment in which we studied the way in which pupil dilation acts as ...

BACKGROUND and aims: In this prospective study, we determined the long term clinical course of patients with achalasia who were treated by pneumatic dilation using the Browne-McHardy dilator, and determined whether previously described predictors of outcome remain significant after prolonged follow up. METHODS Between 1981 and 1991, 54 consecutive patients were treated by pneumatic dilation a...

Fluid percussion brain injury (FPI) impairs pial artery dilation to activators of the ATP-sensitive (K(ATP)) and calcium-activated (K(Ca)) K(+) channels. This study investigated the role of heat shock protein (HSP) in the modulation of K(+) channel-induced pial artery dilation after FPI in newborn pigs equipped with a closed cranial window. Under nonbrain injury conditions, topical coadministra...

Whether endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF)/nitric oxide (NO) plays a role in the dilation of the left circumflex coronary artery during acute exercise and whether endothelium-mediated dilation of this artery is altered after chronic exercise training have not been determined previously. Nine dogs were chronically instrumented for measurements of systemic hemodynamics, left circumflex co...

Adrenomedullin (ADM) is a vasodilator produced by vascular endothelium and smooth muscle cells. Although plasma ADM levels are increased in patients with hypertension, heart failure, and myocardial infarction, little information exists regarding the microvascular response to ADM in the human heart. In the present study we tested the hypothesis that ADM produces coronary arteriolar dilation in h...

OBJECTIVES We explored the association of noncoronary cardiac abnormalities with coronary artery dilation and with laboratory inflammatory markers early after Kawasaki disease (KD) diagnosis. BACKGROUND Left ventricular (LV) dysfunction, mitral regurgitation (MR), and aortic root dilation occur early after diagnosis; their associations with coronary artery dilation and inflammatory markers ha...

A new ASIC capable of computing rank order "lters, weighted rank order "lters, standard erosion and dilation, soft erosion and dilation, order statistic soft erosion and dilation, fuzzy erosion and dilation and fuzzy soft erosion and dilation is presented in this paper. Its function is based on local histogram and a successive approximation technique and performs on 3]3-pixel image windows. The...