A study on the prevalence of a common endoparasite in the wild population of the American cockroach was conducted in Penang Island using a trapping method at several sampling sites on the island. Gregarine blattarum was found in the digestive tract in 5 out of 115, or 4.35%, of the wild American cockroaches, Periplaneta americana, that were sampled. This is the first report in Malaysia of Grega...

Background: Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood. Exposure to allergens plays an important role in asthma. Recently, cockroach has attracted attentions as an important allergen. Objective: To evaluate cockroach allergy in Iranian children with asthma. Methods: 100 children with asthma were studied. After determination of asthma severity, serum total IgE and blood eosinophils w...

Abstrac t -1 . Three fluorescing materials have been discovered in excreta from the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana (L.), and found to increase in concentration as dietary nitrogen increases. 2. These compounds have been identified as kynurenic, xanthurenic and 8-hydroxyquinaldic acids. 3. Feeding cockroaches antibiotic eliminates 8-hydroxyquinaldic acid production, presumably by inhi...

Recent investigations on the physiology of excretion in Rhodnius prolixus indicate that a diuretic hormone is released from the fused mesothoracic ganglion (Maddrell, 1962,1963,1964 a, b). The hormone can be extracted from the posterior neurosecretory cells of the ganglion and it promotes an increased rate of diuresis by the Malpighian tubules. In the American cockroach only an 'antidiuretic pr...

Chlordimeform is a relatively new acaricide/insecticide, whose mode of action we have investigated. It appears to interfere with amine-mediated control of nervous and endocrine systems in a variety of ways. Specifically, chlordimeform causes a build-up of the amines 5-hydroxytryptamine and to a lesser extent norepinephrine in the rat brain in vivo, antagonizes the in vivo action of reserpine in...

The corpora cardiaca of the cockroach Nauphoeta cinerea contain a hypertrehalosaemic hormone (HTH) which is chemically characterized as a blocked decapeptide. The synthetic HTH shows the same chromatographic behaviour as the material isolated from corpora cardiaca. The synthetic peptide causes hypertrehalosaemia and fat body glycogen phosphorylase-activation in N. cinerea as well as in the Amer...

It has long been recognized that allergic inflammation is the fundamental pathological changes of allergy. Soluble aller-gens, specific IgE (sIgE), and mast cells or basophils are three key factors of allergy, representing causative factors, messenger , and primary effector cells, respectively. Eosinophils and neutrophils are known as secondary effector cells. In recent years, varieties of nove...