Objective: To examine whether blood pressure over 24 h differed between postmenopausal women receiving and not receiving hormone replacement therapy. Methods: One group of hormone replacement postmenopausal women (n = 32) and one group of non-hormone replacement (n = 32) postmenopausal women underwent non-invasive 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. They were randomly selected among the 200

Study Objective: To determine whether Postoperative wound infiltration with local anesthetics combined with fentanyl improves analgesia following breast surgery; and to investigate awakening and Postoperative nausea/vomiting. Design: Prospectively randomized clinical study. Setting: University hospital. Patients: 45 ASA physical status I and II patients scheduled for breast surgery. Interventions:

The transparent corneal stroma contains a population of corneal fibroblasts termed keratocytes, which are interspersed between the collagen lamellae. Under normal conditions, the keratocytes are quiescent and transparent. However, after corneal injury the keratocytes become activated and transform into backscattering wound-healing fibroblasts resulting in corneal opacification. At present, the mos

Some cell lines are difficult to grow in confluent monolayers and, therefore, the plaque assay cannot be applied since plaques may be hard to distinguish from other blank areas of the cell monolayers. To avoid this problem a rapid and sensitive immuno dot blot TCID50 method was developed using antibodies against virus antigens to detect infection and virus production. An alternative statistical me

The inflammatory response to bacterial infection is the result of a complex interplay between bacterial products and host effector systems, such as the immune and complement systems. Here we show that Escherichia coli bacteria expressing fibrous surface proteins, known as curli, assemble and activate factors of the human coagulation cascade at their surface. As a result of this interaction, fibrin

Emerging multiculturalism in China's metropolitan areas implies people's frequent engagement in intercultural contacts and, therefore, creates a need for a mutual acculturation between the migrants and the host society. This research aimed to contribute to the study of immigrant adjustment in China by exploring the patterns of dietary acculturation among Russian immigrants residing in Beijing. The

Background: The sural nerve is the most commonly used nerve for grafting severe nerve defects. Our aim was to evaluate subjective outcome in the lower leg after harvesting the sural nerve for grafting nerve defects. Methods: Forty-six patients were asked to fill in a questionnaire to describe symptoms from leg or foot, where the sural nerve has been harvested to reconstruct an injured major nerve

Changes of cellular metabolism are an integral property of the malignant potential of most cancer cells. Already in the 1930s, Otto Warburg observed that tumor cells preferably utilize glycolysis and lactate fermentation for energy production, rather than the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation dominating in normal cells, a phenomenon today known as the Warburg effect. Even though many tumor t

Present and planned experiments motivate new theoretical study of properties of light unflavoured pseudoscalar meson decays. An overview including details on two-loop calculation in SU(3) limit is given.

GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system is also present in the pancreatic islet beta cells where it may function as a paracrine molecule and perhaps as an immunomodulator of lymphocytes infiltrating the pancreatic islet. We examined CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells from diabetes prone (DRlyp/lyp) or resistant (DR+/+) congenic biobreeding (BB) rat

The hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) is postulated to be the ultimate hematopoietic precursor providing production of mature blood cells, and is characterized by a life long capacity for self-renewal and multilineage differentiation. In a healthy human, the HSC produces 1,000,000,000,000 cells per day, illustrating the high turnover within the hematopoietic system and the need for replenishments by H

Surface wave characteristics and radiation efficiency are calculated for a patch antenna with a given current distribution and located on top of an inhomogeneous, isotropic substrate. The substrate is infinite in the lateral directions and inhomogeneous with respect to the height coordinate. The surface waves in the substrate are analysed using the propagator technique and residue calculus. The pr

There have been contradictory reports on the shift in the T-cell cytokine expression pattern of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with atopic dermatitis (AD); more specifically the interleukin (IL)-4 and interferon (IFN)-gamma profiles. The aim of this study was to shed further light on this contradiction by measuring the intracellular cytokines IL-4 and IFN-gamma by flow cytometry

Patients with chronic hepatic encephalopathy (HE) may present affective symptoms and antidepressant drug treatment in this condition is not uncommon. The present microdialysis study investigated treatment with the chronic antidepressant venlafaxine (VEN) in experimental HE with regard to tentative changes in pharmacokinetic and/or pharmacodynamic parameters. Three weeks after portacaval shunt (PCS

In three field seasons, 2003-2005. bumble bees were collected in southern Sweden and eastern Denmark in search of microsporidian parasites. Of file 16 bumble bee species studied, microsporidia were found in Bomhus hortorum, Bomhus hypnorum, Bombas lapidarius, Bomus lucorum, Bombus pascuorum, Bombus pratorum, Bombus ruderarius, and Bombus terrestris. Only one micro-sporidian species, Nosema bombi,

The anaphylatoxic peptide C3a is a pro-inflammatory mediator generated during complement activation, whose specific G protein coupled receptor is expressed on granulocytes, monocytes, mast cells, activated lymphocytes, and in the nervous tissue. We have generated RBL-2H3 cell clones stably expressing mutants of the human C3a-receptor (C3aR) with combined alanine (Ala) substitutions of ten C-termin

Age at menarche is a strong and consistent predictor of breast cancer risk in the general population, but has not been well studied in women with a family history of breast cancer. We conducted this study to examine whether the presence of a deleterious BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation influences age at menarche and to investigate whether or not there is an association between age at menarche and the risk