• Biomedical Science Letters
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.127-131
• /
• 2001

This study was undertaken to examine the effect of amino acids on anoxia-induced cell injury in rabbit renal cortical slices. In order to induce anoxic cell injury, slices were exposed to a 100% $N_2$ atmosphere and control slices were exposed to 100% $O^2$. Irreversible cell injury was estimated by measuring lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release and alterations in renal cell function were examined by measuring p-aminohippurate (PAH) uptake. Anoxia caused the increase in LDH release in a time-dependent manner. Glycine and glutathione almost completely prevented anoxia-induced LDH release. Of amino acids tested, glycine and alanine exerted the protective effect against anoxia-induced cell injury. However, asparagine with amide side chain, leucine and valine with hydrocarbon side chain, and basic amino acids (lysine, histidine, and arginine) were not effective. Anoxia-induced inhibition of PAM uptake was prevented by glycine. ATP content was decreased by anoxia, which was not affected by glycine. Anoxia-induced depletion of glutathione was significantly prevented by glycine. These results suggest that neutral amino acids with simple structure exert the Protective effect against anoxia-induced cell injury the involvement of specific interaction of amino acids and cell structure.

• Biomedical Science Letters
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.319-328
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors influencing the stress of the elderly women by various tools and to provide basic data for adaptation to the aging women. For this purpose, stress was measured by stress measuring equipment (HRV) and stress measurement questionnaire (SRI) in 31 elderly women over 60 years old. In summary, the results of this study suggest that the worse the subjective health, and when there is a spouse, it predicts a stress. In order to reduce the stress of elderly women based on these results, physical health management and environmental factors that can enhance the intimacy between husband and wife are also necessary.

• Biomedical Science Letters
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.137-144
• /
• 2022

Poria cocos is a natural substance known to have anticancer, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. The aim of this study is to investigate the analgesic effects of Poria cocos extract (PCE). We evaluated the analgesic effects of PCE using adjuvant induced arthritis rat model. Male SD rats were administered intra-orally with PCE according to prescribed dosage, during 6 days. After 6 days later, serum TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 levels were measured by ELISA. In our experiment, administration of PCE decreased TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6 and PGE2 level in serum. Furthermore, it was confirmed that allodynia was relieved in evaluation of pain behavior. It was confirmed that administration of PCE reduces nociceptive pain by reducing nociceptive stimuli by acting as an anti-inflammatory drug.

• Biomedical Science Letters
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.343-347
• /
• 2005

Bambusae caulis in Liquamen is one of the important herbal medicine produced by heating bamboo indirectly and is used for treatment of stroke, hypertension, and diabetes etc. Recently the mechanism of clinical effects on Bambusae caulis in Liquamen has been studied. This experiment was conducted to confirm the clinical effects of Bambusae caulis in Liquamen on type 1 diabetes and its related mechanism. We divided C57BL/6 mice into 3 groups and induced them to be type 1 diabetes by injection of streptozocin into peritoneum. The dosage of each group was 150 mg/kg once only, 140 mg/kg once only and 40 mg/kg for 5 days respectively. The two groups injected streptozocin for once took orally Bambusae caulis in Liquamen after the induction of diabetes, and the other one group was given Bambusae caulis in Liquamen during the diabetes inducing period. As the result, the two diabetes-induced groups showed blood glucose decreasing effect by Bambusae caulis in Liquamen on an average, but they didn't show the signiftcant differences statistically. But Bambusae caulis in Liquamen showed the anti-diabetic effect suppressing blood sugar rising trend during the diabetes inducing peried (P<0.05). The anti-oxidative effect of Bambusae caulis in Liquamen was measured with the hypoxanthine/xanthine oxidase (HX/XOD) system. The quantity of ROS was measured using DCFDA reagent indirectly. As the result, $10\%$ solution of Bambusae caulis in Liquamen showed anti-oxidative effect by scavenging $93.4\%$ superoxide as compared with control group. It is suspected that the anti-oxidative effect of Bambusae caulis in Liquamen suppressed the increase of blood glucose in the diabetes-inducing group. These results could be useful data to understand the effect of Bambusae caulis in Liquamen on type 1 diabetes and type 1 diabetes developing because ROS were closely connected with the induction and complications of diabetes.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
• /
• v.20 no.5
• /
• pp.172-186
• /
• 2003

Acupuncture therapy has demonstrated efficacy in several clinical areas, and of these areas the understanding of pain has progressed immensely in the last two decades. The underlying mechanisms of acupuncture in general and the analgesic effect in particular are still not clearly delineated. The leading hypothesis include the effects of local stimulation, neuronal gating, release of endogenous opiates, and the placebo effect. Accumulating evidence suggests that the central nervous system(CNS) is essential for the processing of these effects, via its modulation of the autonomic nervous system, neuro-immune system, and hormonal regulation. These processes tap into basic survival mechanisms. As such, understanding the effects of acupuncture within a neuroscience-based framework becomes vital. We propose a model which incorporates the stress-induced hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis(HPA-axis) model of Akil et al., the cholinergic anti-inflamatory observations of Tracey et al., and Petrovic et al.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.428-436
• /
• 2014

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) technique relies on autocycling strand displacement DNA sysnthesis without template denaturation steps under isothermal conditions. LAMP has more advantages than modern PCR, as it requires only basic laboratory equipment like an isothermal water bath, oven, and heating cabinet. Hence, in this study, five random primers were designed with Streptococcus parauberis, shikimate kinase Arok gene sequences (Genbank accession number: CP0024711). Two primers were selected based on the ladder pattern. Other optimum reaction conditions like temperature, time, and sensitivity were established and confirmed with conventional SYBR-green PCR. Results confirmed that the designed random primers were species specific, without any non-target DNA amplification under isothermal conditions. Hence, this study suggests that LAMP techniques could be used in the diagnosis of fish pathogen, specifically S. parauberis.

• Biomedical Science Letters
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2006

Mineral-induced alkaline-reduced water (MRW) is generated by the chemical reaction of water with alkaline earth metals and characterized by high pH and low oxidation-reduction potential. As ROS are believed to have a role in the pathogenesis of obesity, we attempted to determine the effect of MRW on obesity in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats fed on a high-fat diet. The body weight of the MRW group was significantly lower than that of the control group in most periods of the examination (P<0.05). Serum level of triglycerides (p<0.05) and fat deposition in the livers of the MRW group were found to have been significantly reduced. This suggests that MRW down-regulates lipid metabolism, thereby suppressing obesity. Possible mechanisms of MRW related to reactive oxygen species were also discussed. Our results suggest that MRW is effective in the alleviation of obesity in SD rats fed on high-fat diet.

• Biomedical Science Letters
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.14-21
• /
• 2020

Quantitative evaluation of the sense of smell is done by the olfactory event-related potential (OERP) test. OERP consists of N1, P1, N2, P2, and P3, of which N1 and P1 latency are known to be affected by the concentration of odor stimuli associated with the pre-sensory phase and P2 and P3 are the stages at which odors are perceived and are known to change by subjective evaluation of the stimulus. The purpose of this study was to clarify the correlation between the expression of OERP and the subjective evaluation of the object on the fragrance stimulus using various fragrances. Therefore, the study examined the relative waveform power ratio, preference for each scent stimulus, and finally the amplitude and latency change of the components of OERP, N1 and P2. In contrast, it was found that the late P2 response waveform was an effective aroma stimulus recognition waveform in OERP compared to the initial response waveforms.

• Biomedical Science Letters
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.105-110
• /
• 2003

Ankyrins are a ubiquitously expressed family of intracellular adaptor proteins involved in targeting diverse proteins to specialized membrane domains in both the plasma membrane and the endoplasmic reticulum. Canonical ankyrins are 190-220 kDa proteins expressed in most tissues and cell types and comprise a membrane-binding domain (MBD) of 24 ANK repeats, a spectrin-binding domain, a death domain and a C-terminal domain. Rescue studies with ankyrin-B/G chimeras have identified the C-terminal domain of ankyrin-B as the defining domain in specifying ankyrin-B activity, but the function of C-terminal domain of ankyrin-B is, however, not known. We report here that the C-terminal domain of ankyrin-B is capable of interacting with the C-terminal Region of Hsp40. The Hsps are induced not only by heat shock but also by various other environmental stresses. Hsps are also expressed constitutively at normal growth temperatures and have basic and indispensable functions in the life cycle of proteins as molecular chaperones, as well as playing a role in protecting cells from the deleterious stresses. The binding sites required in the interaction between C-terminal domain of ankyrin-B and C-terminal region of Hsp40 were characterized using the yeast two-hybrid system and GST-pull down assay. The interaction between ankyrin-B and Hsp40 represents the first direct evidence of ankyrin's role as chaperones.

• International Journal of Stem Cells
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.342-355
• /
• 2023

Background and Objectives: Osteoblasts are derived from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) and play important role in bone remodeling. While our previous studies have investigated the cell subtypes and heterogeneity in osteoblasts and BMMSCs separately, cell-to-cell communications between osteoblasts and BMMSCs in vivo in humans have not been characterized. The aim of this study was to investigate the cellular communication between human primary osteoblasts and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. Methods and Results: To investigate the cell-to-cell communications between osteoblasts and BMMSCs and identify new cell subtypes, we performed a systematic integration analysis with our single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) transcriptomes data from BMMSCs and osteoblasts. We successfully identified a novel preosteoblasts subtype which highly expressed ATF3, CCL2, CXCL2 and IRF1. Biological functional annotations of the transcriptomes suggested that the novel preosteoblasts subtype may inhibit osteoblasts differentiation, maintain cells to a less differentiated status and recruit osteoclasts. Ligand-receptor interaction analysis showed strong interaction between mature osteoblasts and BMMSCs. Meanwhile, we found FZD1 was highly expressed in BMMSCs of osteogenic differentiation direction. WIF1 and SFRP4, which were highly expressed in mature osteoblasts were reported to inhibit osteogenic differentiation. We speculated that WIF1 and sFRP4 expressed in mature osteoblasts inhibited the binding of FZD1 to Wnt ligand in BMMSCs, thereby further inhibiting osteogenic differentiation of BMMSCs. Conclusions: Our study provided a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the heterogeneity of osteogenic cells. At the single cell level, this study provided insights into the cell-to-cell communications between BMMSCs and osteoblasts and mature osteoblasts may mediate negative feedback regulation of osteogenesis process.