Several studies have indicated a relationship between body iron content and cardiovascular disease, although other studies have not. There are also suggestions that zinc has an antioxidant and antiatherosclerotic effect. We have used Nuclear Microscopy, using the combination of Scanning Transmission Ion Microscopy (STIM), Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS), and Proton Induced X-ray Em...

The retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor alpha (RORalpha) is critically involved in many physiological functions in several organs. We find that the main RORalpha isoform in the mouse liver is the RORalpha4 isoform, in terms of both mRNA and protein levels, while the RORalpha1 isoform is less abundant. Because hypoxia is a major feature of liver physiology and pathology, we examined t...

Acid-citrate-dextrose (ACD) was introduced in 1947 as a nutrient-anticoagulant solution to preserve stored whole blood. A decade later, the introduction of citrate-phosphate-dextrose (CPD) resulted in the successful preservation of whole blood for 21 days. In 1978, added adenine and increased glucose concentration (CPDA-1) increased storage to 35 days. More recently, other solutions such as AS-...

Recent studies have indicated that regulatory mechanisms underlying the oxygen-dependent expression of the haematopoietic growth factor erythropoietin are widely operative in non-erythropoietin-producing cells and are involved in the regulation of other genes. An important characteristic of this system is that the inducible response to hypoxia is mimicked by exposure to particular transition me...

Recently Gordeuk et all have observed a drastic increase of the rate of parasite clearance in patients with asymptomatic Plasmodium falcipanun infection. They suggested that this may be partially caused by limitation of iron by chelation, although they argued that this may not be the only mechanism limiting growth of P falcipanun. Previous studies have shown elevated levels of neopterin in urin...

We determined the effect of the antioxidants superoxide dismutase, desferrioxamine and allopurinol on the survival of male CBA mice infected intranasally with 2-5 LD50 lung influenza virus A/Aichi/2/68. Survival for at least 20 days was observed for 45% of the mice that received 1000 U/day superoxide dismutase prepared from red blood cells on days 5, 6, 7 and 8 after infection, and 75% survival...

Iron chelators such as desferrioxamine have been shown to ameliorate oxidative damage in vivo. The mechanism of this therapeutic action under non-iron-overload conditions is, however, complex, as desferrioxamine has properties that can impact on oxidative damage independent of its capacity to act as an iron chelator. Desferrioxamine can act as a reducing agent to remove cytotoxic ferryl myoglob...