the dysesthesia and paresthesia that occurs in laboratory rats after spinal cord injury (sci) results in autophagia. this self-destructive behavior interferes with functional assessments in designed studies and jeopardizes the health of the injured rat. in this study, we evaluated role of saturated picric acid in the prevention of autophagia and self-mutilation. all rats were anesthetized with ...

Estrogens and phytoestrogens have neuroprotective effect against neuronal damage induced by cerebral ischemia /reperfusion (I/R) injury. In preceding studies, the phytoestrogen effects have been assessed by administration previous to the ischemic period, conditions which are unusual to apply to the treatment of human stroke. Here we present a study on neuroprotection afforded by genistein on ra...

Ischemic strokes are major causes of death and disability. Searching for potential therapeutic strategies to prevent and treat stroke is necessary, given the increase in overall life expectancy. Epidemiological reports indicate that metformin is an oral antidiabetic medication that can reduce the incidence of ischemic events in patients with diabetes mellitus. Its mechanism of action has not be...

The three major immune-mediated inß ammatory myopathies, dermatomyositis (DM), polymyositis (PM) and inclusion body myositis (IBM), each have their own distinctive clinical features, underlying pathogenetic mechanisms and patterns of muscle gene expression. In DM a complement-dependent humoral process thought to be initiated by antibodies to endothelial cells results in a microangiopathy with s...

Recent experimental studies revealing new biological effects of tamoxifen on tumor cells both expressing and not expressing different types of estrogen receptors (ERα and ERβ) show new aspects of a seemingly well known agent. This review describes tamoxifen targets, the blocking of which leads to inhibition of tumor cell growth and angiogenesis, stimulation of programmed cell death (apoptosis, ...

Prior work has shown that a high dose (20 mg/kg) of systemic morphine, required to produce significant analgesia in the acute phase of a contusion injury, undermines the long-term health of treated subjects and increases lesion size. Moreover, a single dose of systemic morphine in the early stage of injury (24 h post-injury) led to symptoms of neuropathic pain 3 weeks later, in the chronic phas...