Aminopeptidase N (APN) is a naturally occurring ectopeptidase present in mammalian semen. Previous studies have demonstrated that APN adversely affects male fertility through the alteration of sperm motility. This enzyme constitutes 0.5 to 1% of the seminal plasma proteins, which can be transferred from the prostasomes to sperms by a fusion process. In the present study, we investigated the mol...

The first APN polynomials EA-inequivalent to power functions have been constructed in [7, 8] by applying CCZ-equivalence to the Gold APN functions. It is a natural question whether it is possible to construct APN polynomials EA-inequivalent to power functions by using only EA-equivalence and inverse transformation on a power APN function: this would be the simplest method to construct APN polyn...

Adiponectin (APN) can confer protection against metabolism-related illnesses in organs such as fat, the liver, and skeletal muscle. However, it is unclear whether APN improves endothelial-dependent nitric oxide-mediated vasodilation in type 2 diabetes and, if so, by what mechanism. We tested whether exogenous APN delivery improves endothelial function in type 2 diabetic mice and explored the me...

The present study aimed to assess the effects of therapy with adiponectin (APN) gene-modified adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) on pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in rats and the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms. ADSCs were successfully isolated from the rats and characterized. ADSCs were effectively infected with the green fluorescent protein (GFP)-empty (ADSCs-V) or the APN...

PURPOSE There is a concern on which antimicrobials are appropriate as empirical agents for community-onset acute pyelonephritis (APN) in regions where the fluoroquinolone resistance rate is high, such as in Korea. MATERIALS AND METHODS Three hundred and two strains of E. coli in 2001-2002 and 349 strains in 2008-2009 were isolated from the urine cultures of female adult APN patients, and the ...

Adipokine adiponectin (APN) has been recently reported to play a role in regulating bone mineral density (BMD). To explore the mechanism by which APN affects BMD, we investigated BMD and biomechanical strength properties of the femur and vertebra in sham-operated (Sham) and ovariectomized (OVX) APN knockout (KO) mice as compared to their operated wild-type (WT) littermates. The results show tha...

OBJECTIVE Growing evidence suggests that neurodegenerative diseases are associated with metabolic disorders, but the mechanisms are still unclear. Better comprehension of this issue might provide a new strategy for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. We investigated possible roles of adiponectin (APN), the anti-diabetes protein, in the pathogenesis of α-synucleinopathies. METHODS Using b...

The present study determined the dynamic change of adiponectin (APN, a cardioprotective adipokine), its receptor expression, and their impact upon myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury during type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) progression, and involved underlying mechanisms. Diabetic state was induced in mice via multiple intraperitoneal injections of low-dose streptozotocin. The dynamic c...

Adiponectin (APN) is an adipocyte-derived factor that exists at high concentrations in serum and has anti-inflammatory and systemic vascular-protective properties. In this study, we investigated the role of APN in pulmonary vascular homeostasis. We found that APN localizes to the luminal side of blood vessels in lung and acts in vitro to block TNF-alpha-induced E-selectin upregulation in pulmon...

BACKGROUND Although Japanese-Americans and native Japanese share the same genetic predispositions, they live different lifestyles, resulting in insulin resistance in Japanese-Americans. We investigated whether the quantitative and qualitative changes in adiponectin (APN) due to differences in lifestyle contribute to the development of insulin resistance. METHODS We evaluated 325 native Japane...