It is considered a dogma that a secretory peak of LH is indispensable as the trigger of ovulation. However, earlier studies on hypophysectomized rodents have shown that stimulation with recombinant FSH, devoid of any LH activity, is able to boost the final stages of follicular maturation and trigger ovulation. As the expression of ovarian LH receptors (LHRs) still persists after hypophysectomy, such studies cannot totally exclude the possibility that LHR activation is involved in the apparently pure FSH effects. To revisit this question, we analyzed in LHR knockout (LuRKO) mice the progression of folliculogenesis and induction of ovulation by human chorionic gonadotropin and human recombinant FSH treatments. The results provide clear evidence that follicular development and ovulation could not be induced by high doses of FSH in the absence of LHR expression. Ovarian histology and oocyte analyses indicated that follicular maturation did not advance in LuRKO mice beyond the antral follicle stage. Neither were ovulations detected in LuRKO ovaries after any of the gonadotropin treatments. The ovarian resistance to FSH treatment in the absence of LHR was confirmed by real-time RT-PCR and immunohistochemical analyses of a number of gonadotropin-dependent genes, which only responded to the treatments in wild-type control mice. Negative findings were not altered by estradiol priming preceding the gonadotropin stimulations. Hence, the present study shows that, in addition to ovulation, the expression of LHR is essential for follicular maturation in the progression from antral to preovulatory stage.

No abstract

Patients with visual neglect (VN) tend to start cancellation tasks from the right. This exceptional initial rightward bias is also seen in some right hemisphere (RH) stroke patients who do not meet the criteria of VN in conventional tests. The present study compared RH infarct patients’ (examined on average 4 days post-stroke) and healthy controls’ starting points (SPs) in three cancellation tasks of the Behavioural Inattention Test (BIT). Furthermore, task-specific guideline values were defined for a normal SP to differentiate the performance of healthy subjects from that of patients with subclinical inattention. Conventional tests indicated that 15 of the 70 RH infarct patients had VN. The control group comprised 44 healthy volunteers. In each task, the VN group started the cancellations mainly from the right. The non-neglect and healthy groups initiated most cancellations from the left, more so in the healthy group. Starting more than one BIT task outside the guideline value indicated pathological inattention, as this was typical among the VN patients, but exceptional among the healthy subjects. One-third of the non-neglect patients showed pathological inattention by starting more than one task outside the guideline value. Clinical assessment of VN should, therefore, include an evaluation of the SPs to detect this subtle form of neglect. (JINS, 2010, 16, 902–909.)

NEP activity is increased in stenotic aortic valves in parallel with increased expression of BK-receptors. The upregulation of NEP and BK-1R have the potential to promote valvular fibrosis and remodelling while the increase in BK-2R may represent a compensatory antifibrotic response. These findings add novel pathogenic insight and raise potential new therapeutic targets in AS.

During the first year after RH infarct, originally left-sided manifestation of neglect shifted toward milder non-lateralized attentional deficit. Ipsilateral orienting bias and slowed processing speed appeared to be rather persistent neglect-related symptoms both in neglect patients and patients with initially milder inattention. We propose some effortless, tentative ways of examining processing speed and ipsilateral orienting bias alongside the BIT to better recognize these neglect-related symptoms, and highlight the need to assess and treat patients with initially milder inattention, who have been under-recognized and under-treated in clinical work. (JINS, 2018, 24, 617-628).