Congestive heart failure (HF) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although advances in medical therapy, mechanical support and heart transplantation have been made, almost half of all patients with HF succumb to the disease within five years of the initial diagnosis. Therefore, treatment methods need to be identified to restore the structure and function of cardiac muscle. ...

OBJECTIVES The objective of our study was to test the hypothesis that in utero repair of surgically created spina bifida in a sheep model using cryopreserved human umbilical cord (HUC) patch improves neurological outcome. METHODS Spina bifida with myelotomy was surgically created in timed pregnant ewes at gestational day (GD) 75. The fetuses were randomly assigned to unrepaired versus HUC and...

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory bowel disease with alterations of colonic motility, which influence clinical symptoms. Although morpho-functional abnormalities in the enteric nervous system have been suggested, in UC patients scarce attention has been paid to possible changes in the cells that control colonic motility, including myenteric neurons, glial cells and interstitial cells o...

BACKGROUND Historically, histiocytic ulcerative (HUC) (or granulomatous) colitis of Boxer dogs was considered an idiopathic immune-mediated disease with a poor prognosis. Recent reports of dramatic responses to enrofloxacin and the discovery of invasive Escherichia coli within the colonic mucosa of affected Boxer dogs support an infectious etiology. HYPOTHESIS Invasive E. coli is associated w...

The purpose of this study was to identify new tumor suppressor microRNAs (miRNA; miR) in bladder cancer, conduct functional analysis of their suppressive role, and identify their specific target genes. To explore tumor suppressor miRs in bladder cancer, miR microarray was conducted using SV-HUC-1, T24, J82, and TCCSUP cells. Expression of miR-493 in bladder cancer (T24, J82, and TCCSUP) cells w...

The present study investigated the recovery and intrathecal administration of human umbilical cord‑derived mesenchymal stem cells (HUC‑MSCs) by lumbar puncture and analyzed the technical difficulties and short and long‑term effects of UC‑MSC transplantation in various neurological conditions. In total, 100 patients who underwent subarachnoid placement of UC‑MSCs between December 2006 and May 20...

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of 2% L-glutamine supplementation on myenteric innervation in the ileum of diabetic rats, grouped as follows: normoglycemic (N); normoglycemic supplemented with L-glutamine (NG); diabetic (D); and diabetic supplemented with L-glutamine (DG). The ileums were subjected to immunohistochemical techniques to localize neurons immunoreactive t...

Mechanisms regulating masculinization of the zebra finch song system are unclear; both estradiol and sex-specific genes may be important. This study was designed to investigate relationships between estrogen and ribosomal proteins (RPL17 and RPL37; sex-linked genes) that exhibit greater expression in song control nuclei in juvenile males than females. Four studies on zebra finches were conducte...

With the ability of tropism towards tumors, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been considered to be attractive delivering vehicles for antitumor therapy. Molecular imaging allows noninvasive tracking of molecular or cellular processes in vivo, as well as evaluation of targeted cancer therapy. We recently exploited bioluminescence imaging (BLI) and near infrared (NIR) imaging to evaluate the in...

background: nanoparticles have become one of the leading technologies over the past two years. the extensive use of nanoparticles has raised great concern about their occupational fate and biological effects. with an increase in the production and use of nanomaterial, it is more likely to get exposed to them occupationally and environmentally. objective: to assess the toxicity of silver nanopar...