Ba++ ion blocks K+ conductance at concentrations in the nanomolar range. This blockage is time and voltage dependent. From the time dependence it is possible to determine the forward and reverse rate constants for what appears to be an essentially first-order process of Ba++ interaction. The voltage dependence of the rate constants and the dissociation constants place the site of interaction ne...

We evaluated linear growth of 27 children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) treated with low doses of oral hydrocortisone. They were followed-up during 6.1 +/- 1.8 years with daily hydrocortisone doses of 10.84 +/- 2.0 mg/m2 and 0.1 mg fludrocortisone (24 of them). Twenty-three were female. Mean chronological age (CA) was 6.1 +/- 2.9 years and bone age (BA) 6.9 +/- 3.3 (r = 0.66) at the...

36 systemic lupus erythematosus patients with native DNA binding activity (nDNA-BA) in the serum and subepidermal immunoglobulin deposits were studied to determine the relationship of the immunoglobulin (Ig) class distribution of serum nDNA-BA to the clinical characteristics of their disease and to the Ig class present at the dermal-epidermal junction (DEJ). The patients with predominantly (86-...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal increases (activations) and BOLD signal decreases ("deactivations") were compared in six healthy volunteers during galvanic vestibular (mastoid) and galvanic cutaneous (neck) stimulation in order to differentiate vestibular from ocular motor and nociceptive functions. By calculating the contrast for vestibular...

We sought to examine flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD) in both the arm [brachial artery (BA)] and lower leg [popliteal artery (PA)] of 12 young, healthy subjects. Vessel diameter, blood velocity, and calculated shear rate were determined with ultrasound Doppler following a suprasystolic cuff occlusion (5 min) in both the BA and PA and an additional reduced occlusion period (30-120 s) in the BA t...

Monoclonal antibody BA-1 binds to B lymphocytes, to cells from most cases of non-T acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), and weakly to neutrophils. To determine whether BA-1 also reacts with hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPC), we studied the effect of removal of BA-1+ cells from human bone marrow on the proliferation in vitro of the trilineage precursor cell CFU-GEMM, and on the committed proge...

This review examines the role of skeletal maturity ('bone age', BA) assessment in clinical practice. BA is mainly used in children with the following conditions: short stature (addressed in part 1 of this review), tall stature, early or late puberty, and congenital adrenal hyperplasia (all addressed in part 2). Various manual and automatic methods of BA assessment have been developed. Healthy t...

Sirtuin 1 (Sirt1) is an NAD+-dependent protein deacetylase that is proposed to mediate many health-promoting effects of calorie restriction (CR). We recently reported that short-term CR increased the bile acid (BA) pool size in mice, likely due to increased BA synthesis in liver. Given the important role of Sirt1 in the regulation of glucose, lipid, as well as BA metabolism, we hypothesized tha...

OBJECTIVE Biliary atresia (BA) is a progressive fibroinflammatory liver disease. Autotaxin (ATX) has a profibrotic effect resulting from lysophosphatidic acid activity. The purpose of this study was to examine ATX expression and ATX promoter methylation in peripheral blood leukocytes and liver tissues from BA patients and controls and investigate their associations with outcome parameters in BA...

Most patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring common epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations, such as deletions in exon 19 or the L858R mutation in exon 21, respond dramatically to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKI), and their sensitivities to various EGFR-TKI have been well characterized. Our previous article showed the in vitro sensitivities of EGFR exon 18...