A comparative study of clinical characteristics, work-up, treatment, and association to malignancy in dermatomyositis between two tertiary skin centers in the USA and Singapore.

Background: To date, no study has compared the clinical characteristics, malignancy associations, and treatment of dermatomyositis in predominantly Caucasian vs. Asian populations.

Materials And Methods: This prospective study was conducted to compare clinical characteristics of dermatomyositis, its relationship to malignancy, and treatment between two tertiary medical centers in the USA and Singapore.

Early diffusion-weighted MRI as a predictor of caspase-3 activation after hypoxic-ischemic insult in neonatal rodents.

Background And Purpose: Neonatal encephalopathy in human babies is a serious condition associated with permanent neurological deficits. Diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) is increasingly used for early diagnosis of brain injury in human babies. The relationship between the presence of DWI abnormalities and cellular injury, including apoptosis, during the neonatal period are not well understood.

Minocycline confers early but transient protection in the immature brain following focal cerebral ischemia-reperfusion.

The incidence of neonatal stroke is high and currently there are no strategies to protect the neonatal brain from stroke or reduce the sequelae. Agents capable of modifying inflammatory processes hold promise. We set out to determine whether delayed administration of one such agent, minocycline, protects the immature brain in a model of transient middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion in 7-day-old rat pups.

Differential vulnerability of immature murine neurons to oxygen-glucose deprivation.

In vivo studies support selective neuronal vulnerability to hypoxia-ischemia (HI) in the developing brain. Since differences in intrinsic properties of neurons might be responsible, pure cultures containing immature neurons (6-8 days in vitro) isolated from mouse cortex and hippocampus, regions chosen for their marked vulnerability to oxidative stress, were studied under in vitro ischemic conditions-oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD). Twenty-four hours of reoxygenation after 2.

Fructose-1,6-bisphosphate preserves intracellular glutathione and protects cortical neurons against oxidative stress.

Fructose-1,6-bisphosphate (FBP), an endogenous intermediate of glycolysis, protects the brain against ischemia-reperfusion injury. The mechanisms of FBP protection after cerebral ischemia are not well understood. The current study was undertaken to determine whether FBP protects primary neurons against hypoxia and oxidative stress by preserving reduced glutathione (GSH).