Some dietary factors could inhibit lead toxicity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of dietary compounds rich in unsaturated fatty acids (FA) on blood lead level, lipid metabolism, and vascular reactivity in rats. Serum metallothionein and organs' lead level were evaluated with the aim of assessing the possible mechanism of unsaturated FA impact on blood lead level. For three mon...

Acanthocytic red cells in patients with abetalipoproteinemia are morphologically similar to the red cells in spur cell anemia. Fluidity of membrane lipids is decreased in spur cells due to their excess cholesterol content. Acanthocyte membranes have an increased content of sphingomyelin and a decreased content of lecithin. To assess the effect of this abnormality of acanthocyte membrane lipid c...

Egg lecithin is a complex mixture of phosphatides that consists mainly of phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine, combined with various amounts of other substances such as triglycerides and fatty acids [1]. As pharmaceutical excipient lecithin is used in parenteral emulsions, liposomes and mixed micellar solutions. It has been proved, that aqueous dispersions of lecithin (Water-Lecith...

In earlier studies, we prepared a docosapeptide, 1, designed with minimum homology as an amphiphilic alpha-helical model of apolipoprotein A-I (apo A-I) and described its lipid-binding characteristics, surface properties, and enzyme-activating ability. Although the affinity of 1 for egg lecithin unilamellar vesicles was comparable with that for the binding of apo A-I, the affinity of 1 for mixe...

Reversed micellar two-phase extraction is a developing technique for protein separation. Introduction of an affinity ligand is considered to be an effective approach to increase the selectivity and capacity of reversed micelles. In this article, Cibacron Blue F3G-A (CB) as an affinity ligand was immobilized to reversed micelles composed of soybean lecithin by a two-phase reaction. The affinity ...

Asperfuran is a novel antifungal dihydrobenzofuran derivative produced by a strain of Aspergillus oryzae. Asperfuran weakly inhibited chitin synthase from Coprinus cinereus. This inhibition could be abolished by the addition of egg lecithin. In the agar diffusion assay asperfuran induced morphological changes in Mucor miehei at very low concentrations (20 ng/disc) while growth was only partly i...