Taste bud cells (TBCs) express various neurotransmitter receptors assumed to facilitate or modify taste information processing within taste buds. We investigated the functional expression of muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR) subtypes, M1-M5, in mouse fungiform TBCs. ACh applied to the basolateral membrane of TBCs elevates the intracellular Ca(2+) level in a concentration-dependent manne...

In the present study, we evaluated whether childhood differences in body height between singletons and twins persist into adulthood. Data from the Medical Birth Register of Norway were linked with data from the Norwegian National Conscript Service. This study used data on the 457,999 males who were born alive and without physical anomalies in single or twin births in Norway during 1967-1984 and...

BACKGROUND The number of children born to foreign-born mothers in Taiwan has significantly increased since the 1990s. These foreign-born mothers are mainly from China and Southeast Asia. Children born to foreign-born mothers, according to media reports, are subject to inferior health. This study sought to determine whether socioeconomic disparities in birth outcomes exist between native and for...

Much adult physical inactivity research ignores early-life factors from which later influences may originate. In the 1958 British birth cohort (followed from 1958 to 2008), leisure-time inactivity, defined as activity frequency of less than once a week, was assessed at ages 33, 42, and 50 years (n = 12,776). Early-life factors (at ages 0-16 years) were categorized into 3 domains (i.e., physical...