Role of coagulation factor XII in unexplained recurrent abortions in the Greek population.

Objective: To investigate the prevalence and clinical significance of congenital factor XII (FXII) deficiency in the South-European Caucasian (Greek) population in a cohort of women with recurrent spontaneous abortions (RSAs).

Study Design: One hundred women with a history of > or =2 RSAs of unexplained nature were compared to 100 age-matched, healthy controls with no history of thrombotic disease or adverse pregnancy outcomes, regarding FXII activity. Women were included in the RSA group if they had normal coagulation parameters and no congenital or acquired thrombophilia.

Human amniotic fluid stimulates the proliferation of human fetal and adult skin fibroblasts: the roles of bFGF and PDGF and of the ERK and Akt signaling pathways.

Fetuses and adults follow different repair strategies for the healing of skin wounds. Experimental evidence indicates that this most probably reflects the intrinsic characteristics of fetal tissue, although environmental factors may also contribute to this phenomenon. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of the in utero environment, i.

Optimisation of T2 and M0 measurements of bi-exponential systems.

Cramer-Rao theory and computer simulations were used to show that the errors involved in calculating the magnetization and relaxation parameters of a two-component system decrease with: (1) increasing SNR, (2) increasing number of echoes used in the fitting procedure, and (3) increasing ratio of the relaxation times of the two components, T(22)/T(21). Images of bi-compartmental phantoms of known T(2) values were acquired using an optimized imaging sequence, and an optimized fitting algorithm was used to calculate the T(2) values of the two components by fitting the resulting images to a bi-exponential decay model. Accuracy better than 6% was achieved in the calculations of the T(2) values of the two components, and region fitting provided better accuracy than pixel-by-pixel fitting.

A novel RF coil configuration for in-vivo and ex-vivo imaging of arthritic rabbit knee joints.

The purpose of this study was to design and build an optimized Radio Frequency (RF) coil configuration, that would facilitate the acquisition of high resolution 3-dimensional (3D) images of arthritic and normal rabbit knees. A surface coil transmit surface coil receive configuration was built, in order to ensure adequate B(1) homogeneity over the imaging volume and maximum filling factor, and hence to maximize the Signal to Noise ratio (SNR) and resolution of the 3-dimensional images. The two coils were passively decoupled using crossed diodes and lambda/4 lines, both during the transmit and receive phases of the imaging experiment.