Intracerebral venous angiomas as a cause of exophthalmos.

Three cases of an infrequent cerebral vascular malformation, venous angioma, are reported. The first 2 of these cases, with the lesion in a supratentorial location, exhibited exophthalmos as a presenting symptom, together with palpebral or intraobital angiomatous formations, and also impairment of visual function. The first patient was operated upon and the "venous angioma" could be confirmed histologically. An angiographic follow-up of the same patient at an 18 year interval was also possible. The diagnostic work-up to be performed in cases of exophthalmos is discussed and the need for angiography is stressed.     

Effects of Fenugreek Seed Extract and Swimming Endurance Training on Plasma Glucose and Cardiac Antioxidant Enzymes Activity in Streptozotocin-induced Diabetic Rats

Objective

Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by chronic hyperglycemia condition resulting from defective insulin secretion or resistance insulin action, or both. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of 6 weeks swimming training and Trigonella foenum-graecum seed (fenugreek) extract, alone and in combination, on plasma glucose and cardiac antioxidant enzyme activity of streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.

Methods

Fifty male Wistar rats were divided into five groups: diabetic control (DC, n = 8); healthy control (HC, n = 11); swimming training (S, n = 11); swimming training + fenugreek seed extract (1.74 g/kg body weight; SF1, n = 11); and swimming training + fenugreek seed extract (0.87 g/kg body weight; SF2, n = 9). Streptozotocin was used for the induction of diabetes. Results were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance followed by Tukey test.

Results

In comparison with the DC group, all groups exhibited a significant decrease in body weight (p < 0.05), except for the HC group. SF1 and HC groups showed significant decreases in plasma glucose levels compared with the DC group (p < 0.05). S, SF1, SF2, and HC groups showed significant elevations in cardiac antioxidant enzymes activity in comparison with the DC group.

Conclusion

The results indicated that the combination of endurance swimming training and fenugreek seed extract can significantly reduce the plasma glucose levels and increase cardiac antioxidant enzymes activity in diabetic rats. Our findings suggest that this combination could be useful for the treatment of hyperglycemia and cardiac oxidative stress induced by diabetes mellitus.     

The effect of Crocin on TFAM and PGC-1α expression and Catalase and Superoxide dismutase activities following cholestasis-induced neuroinflammation in the striatum of male Wistar rats

Metabolic Brain Disease - Bile secretion is a physiological function that is disrupted following Bile Duct Ligation (BDL) and induces cholestasis. Cholestasis is a bile flow reduction that induces...     

Galanin decreases proliferation of PC12 cells and induces apoptosis via its subtype 2 receptor (GalR2)

Galanin is a neuropeptide with a wide range of effects in the nervous and endocrine systems, mediated through three G protein-coupled receptor subtypes (GalR1-3). Interestingly, galanin and its receptors are also expressed in certain tumors. Here we studied the effects of galanin in rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cells stably transfected with GFP-tagged GalR2. Galanin at 100 nM inhibited cell proliferation in both nontransfected and transfected cells. Conversly, both galanin and the GalR2(R3)-agonist AR-M1896 induced caspase-dependent apoptotic cell death only in GalR2-transfected cells. Western-blot analyses of downstream mediators of the G(q/11)-type G protein showed down-regulation of pAkt and pBad in galanin-exposed transfected cells. Also, the specific PI3 kinase inhibitor LY-294002 increased the level of pBad and decreased activation of caspases. In addition, p21(cip1) levels were up-regulated in galanin-exposed PC12 cells and down-regulated in galanin-exposed GalR2-transfected cells. In agreement, FACS analyses of galanin exposed cells showed occurrence of cell cycle arrest in PC12 cells and cell death in transfected cells. Finally, as shown with real-time PCR, galanin and its receptors were expressed at very high levels in human pheochromocytoma tissues as compared with normal adrenal medulla. These findings point to GalR2 as a possible target for therapeuthic interventions in pheochromocytoma.     

A novel non-linear recursive filter design for extracting high rate pulse features in nuclear medicine imaging and spectroscopy

Applications in imaging and spectroscopy rely on pulse processing methods for appropriate data generation. Often, the particular method utilized does not highly impact data quality, whereas in some scenarios, such as in the presence of high count rates or high frequency pulses, this issue merits extra consideration. In the present study, a new approach for pulse processing in nuclear medicine imaging and spectroscopy is introduced and evaluated. The new non-linear recursive filter (NLRF) performs nonlinear processing of the input signal and extracts the main pulse characteristics, having the powerful ability to recover pulses that would ordinarily result in pulse pile-up. The filter design defines sampling frequencies lower than the Nyquist frequency.In the literature, for systems involving NaI(Tl) detectors and photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), with a signal bandwidth considered as 15 MHz, the sampling frequency should be at least 30 MHz (the Nyquist rate), whereas in the present work, a sampling rate of 3.3 MHz was shown to yield very promising results. This was obtained by exploiting the known shape feature instead of utilizing a general sampling algorithm. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed filter enhances count rates in spectroscopy. With this filter, the system behaves almost identically as a general pulse detection system with a dead time considerably reduced to the new sampling time (300 ns). Furthermore, because of its unique feature for determining exact event times, the method could prove very useful in time-of-flight PET imaging.