The paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVH) plays an important role in energy homeostasis, regulating neuroendocrine, behavioral, and autonomic functions. However, the role of the PVH in regulating thermogenesis and energy expenditure in brown adipose tissue (BAT) is unclear. The present study investigated the effect of activating neurons within the PVH on BAT thermogenesis. In uretha...

The sympathetic nervous system, leptin, and renin-angiotensin system (RAS) have been implicated in obesity-associated hypertension. There is increasing evidence for the presence of both leptin and angiotensin II receptors in several key brain cardiovascular and metabolic control regions. We tested the hypothesis that the brain RAS plays a facilitatory role in the sympathetic nerve responses to ...

AIM To determine whether the naturally occurring Thomsen-Friedenreich (TF) antigen-specific antibodies differ in avidity between cancer patients and controls to find a novel biomarker for stomach cancer. METHODS Serum samples were taken from patients with cancer and controls. The level of TF-specific antibodies and their sialylation were determined using ELISA with synthetic TF-polyacrylamide...

Elevated sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) coupled with dysregulated β-adrenoceptor (β-AR) signaling is postulated as a major driving force for cardiac dysfunction in patients with type 2 diabetes; however, cardiac SNA has never been assessed directly in diabetes. Our aim was to measure the sympathetic input to and the β-AR responsiveness of the heart in the type 2 diabetic heart. In vivo record...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the oropharyngeal (OP) and nasal passage (NP) volumes along with various airway variables of patients with normal nasorespiratory functions having different dentofacial skeletal patterns and to evaluate the correlations between different variables and the airway. One hundred and one patients (57 males and 44 females, aged 14-18 years) having pre-treatment c...

Obesity is a global problem and effective drug therapy treatment is still unavailable. Obesity develops due to an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure (EE). Understanding what happens to EE in obesity may be the key to developing new treatments for obesity. If EE in obesity can be elevated, it could be a potential therapeutic target. We recently discovered that in baseline con...

1. At present there is no consensus about the optimal management of hyponatraemia to prevent demyelinating brain lesions. We have evaluated in a large series of rats (n = 136) the protective role of urea for the brain in the treatment of severe chronic hyponatraemia. Urea (group I, n = 51) was compared with hypertonic saline in boluses (group II, n = 46) and with hypertonic saline in divided do...

Feline upper respiratory tract aspergillosis (URTA) occurs as two distinct anatomical forms, namely, sino-nasal aspergillosis (SNA) and sino-orbital aspergillosis (SOA). An emerging pathogen, Aspergillus felis, is frequently involved. The pathogenesis of URTA, in particular the relationship between the infecting isolate and outcome, is poorly understood. In this study, computed tomography was u...

Accumulating evidence suggests that insulin acts within the hypothalamus to alter sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) and baroreflex function. Although insulin receptors are widely expressed across the hypothalamus, recent evidence suggests that neurons of the arcuate nucleus (ARC) play an important role in the sympathoexcitatory response to insulin. The purpose of the present study was to determi...

Microneurographic measurements of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) have suggested that, during static exercise, central command is much less important than skeletal muscle afferents in causing sympathetic neural activation. The possibility remains, however, that the sympathetic discharge produced by central commandis targeted mainly to tissues other than skeletal muscle. To examine this ...