No abstract

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between miR-499 rs3746444 and miR-196a rs11614913 polymorphisms, and susceptibility to breast cancer in an Iranian population. Methods: This case-control study was performed on a population of 200 subjects comprising 100 breast cancer patients (case/observation group) and 100 healthy individuals (control group). Amplification refractory mutation system-polymerase chain reaction (ARMS-PCR) was used to genotype these polymorphisms. P-values and odd ratios were determined, and p-values < 0.05 and odd ratios > 1 were considered statistically significant. Results: There were no significant differences between observation and control groups with respect to rs11614913 T/C polymorphism. The rs11614913 T allele was not identified as a risk factor for susceptibility to breast cancer (OR = 0.86, 95 % CI = 0.85 -1.3, p = 0.46). However, there were significant differences between observation and control groups with respect to rs3746444 T/C polymorphism. It was observed that cytosine-cytosine (CC) (OR = 4.5,, p = 0.06), and cytosine-thymine (CT) (OR = 1.9, 95% CI = 1-3.6, p = 0.04) genotypes had protective influence against susceptibility to breast cancer. Conclusion: These results indicate that CC and CT genotypes are associated with reduced risk of breast cancer. In particular, the presence of C allele is significantly associated with a low risk of breast cancer. These findings may provide useful information for prevention and early diagnosis of breast cancer. This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of intra-hippocampal injection of Growth Hormone (GH) on impaired spatial cognition in rats with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Growth hormone replacement therapy leading to improved cognition and well-being has mainly been carried in GH-deficient patients. Nevertheless, relatively only a few studies have investigated the function of GH in the brain. Aged Wistar male rats (350-400 g, 18-20 months old) were randomly divided into 6 groups (7 in each): Control (healthy aged); L; L + Veh; L + GH10; L + GH20 and L + GH40. Rats with AD-like cognitive deficiency was induced by injection of ibotenic acid into Nucleus Basalis of Meynert (NBM) bilaterally (5 microg 0.5 microL(-1), each side). A guide cannula was implanted in the right hippocampus under stereotaxic surgery for injection of human recombinant GH (10, 20 and 40 microg 2 microL(-1), during 5 min, twice daily, 9:00 am and 3:00 pm, for 7 days). All rats were trained in Morris water maze to evaluate the spatial learning and memory. Escape latency, traveled distance to find hidden platform and percent time spent in gaol qudrant did not differ between L and L + Veh groups, while latency and distance were reduced significantly. But percent time spent in gaol quadrant (without hidden platform) was increased significantly in NBM-lesioned rats treated with GH (L + GH groups) dose dependently to compare with vehicle treated group. These results suggest that intra-hippocampal injection of GH to aged rats with dementia type of AD (with NBM lesioned) could improve spatial cognition.

No abstract

Background Alpha-scorpion toxins with long-chain peptide and four disulfide bonds represent diverse pharmacological profiles for various subtypes of voltage-gated sodium channels. Obtaining the natural toxins are difficult and time-consuming process, which represents the major difficulty to interpreting analysis of their structural and functional properties. Methods and ResultsThis study describes the toxin peptide and plasmid construct containing the gene coding for mammalian toxin AnCra1 from the scorpion Androctonus crassicauda venom. We have established genetic construction of fusion protein in pET32a + vector containing thioredoxin (Trx-tag), enterokinase cleavage site and 6xhistidine-tag for efficient expression in Escherichia coli strain RG2 (DE3). The soluble expressed peptide, then purified by Ni-NTA resin affinity chromatography and its purity was confirmed by reverse-phase HPLC and mass spectrometry (7433.54 Da.). The electrophysiological data showed that recombinant AnCra1 selectively inhibits the fast inactivation of hNav1.7 channel (EC 50 = 136.7 ± 6.6 nM). Conclusions Our findings demonstrate that the AnCra1 is structurally and functionally analogous to alpha excitatory toxins; furthermore, expression and purification of bioactive scorpion toxins in bacterial cells can be a practicable and efficient way to obtain a novel source of toxin peptides as tools to study the function and physiological responses of ion channels.