Previous studies have suggested that salt-sensitive hypertension in humans and experimental animals may in part be due to dysregulation of the L-arginine/nitric oxide system. This study was conducted to determine the endothelial, inducible, and neuronal nitric oxide synthase expressions in the kidney, heart, aorta, and brain of salt-sensitive and salt-resistant Dahl rats. We studied salt-sensit...

The identification of human inflammatory cells that express inducible nitric oxide synthase and the clarification of the role of inducible nitric oxide synthase in human infectious or inflammatory processes have been elusive. In neutrophil-enriched fractions from urine, we demonstrate a 43-fold increase in nitric oxide synthase activity in patients with urinary tract infections compared with th...

BACKGROUND Peripheral neuropathy is a frequent and major complication of diabetes. METHODS AND RESULTS Severe peripheral neuropathy developed in type II diabetic mice, characterized by significant slowing of motor and sensory nerve conduction velocities. Rosuvastatin restored nerve vascularity, including vessel size, and nerve function also recovered to the levels of nondiabetic mice. Neurona...

BACKGROUND Bypass graft disease is related to proliferation and migration of vascular smooth muscle cells and to platelet activation with thrombus formation. Nitric oxide inhibits these biological responses; it has never been demonstrated, however, whether this occurs in intact human vascular tissue after endothelial nitric oxide synthase gene transfer. METHODS We examined whether endothelial...

Immunosuppressants FK506 and cyclosporin A inhibit neurotoxicity of N-methyl-D-aspartate in primary cortical cultures, while having no effect on quisqualate- and kainate-mediated neurotoxicity. Rapamycin completely reverses the neuroprotective effect of FK506. Both FK506 and cyclosporin A inhibit NMDA-elicited/nitric oxide-mediated increases in cGMP levels in cortical cultures. FK506 has no eff...

BACKGROUND Endothelial nitric oxide synthase produces nitric oxide which is involved in many physiologic regulatory functions. Variable number of tandem repeats in intron 4 of endothelial nitric oxide synthase gene are reported to be associated with blood pressure regulation. Nitric oxide is involved in regulation of cardiomyocyte genes but it is not known If endothelial nitric oxide synthase 4...

1. The role of the potent vasodilator nitric oxide in the pathogenesis of pre-eclampsia is unclear. We have tested the hypothesis that placental activity of the enzyme which synthesizes nitric oxide (nitric oxide synthase) is reduced in pre-eclampsia. 2. Placentae were obtained after vaginal delivery or Caesarean section from women who had been assigned to the following groups according to stan...

abstract introduction: matrix metalloproteinase 2 is one of the inflammatory mediators that is involved in nociceptive processing and its production is regulated by many inflammatory factors such as nitric oxide. we studied the role of mmp-2 on the analgesic effects of nnos inhibitor. methods: considering that nitric oxide has many roles in pain processing, we studied the csf levels of mmp-2 af...

Hypertension is accompanied by architectural changes in the kidney, heart, and vessels that are often maladaptive and can eventually contribute to end-organ disease such as renal failure, heart failure, and coronary disease. Nitric oxide, an endogenous vasodilator and antithrombotic agent synthesized in the endothelium by a constitutive nitric oxide synthase, inhibits growth-related responses t...

Nitric oxide is implicated in methamphetamine (METH)-induced neurotoxicity; however, the source of the nitric oxide has not been identified. Previous work has also revealed that animals with partial dopamine loss induced by a neurotoxic regimen of methamphetamine fail to exhibit further decreases in striatal dopamine when re-exposed to methamphetamine 7-30 days later. The current study examined...