Mitochondrial Myopathy in a 21-Year-Old Man Presenting With Bilateral Lower Extremity Weakness and Swelling.

Bilateral lower extremity weakness and swelling can have several causes. Although often underdiagnosed, mitochondrial myopathy is more prevalent in the general population than more commonly suspected diseases, such as Guillain-Barre syndrome. The clinical manifestations of mitochondrial disease can be broadly classified into 3 categories: chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia, skeletal muscle-central nervous system syndromes, or pure myopathy.

The effect of metformin on glucose metabolism in patients receiving glucocorticoids.

Glucocorticoids have powerful anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects, but chronic use of these drugs can cause hyperglycemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus, hepatic steatosis, obesity, and other complications due to their metabolic actions. Metformin is a widely used drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus with a known ability to lower blood glucose levels. This review focuses on metformin's actions on glucose metabolism and its potential use as a drug to limit the metabolic side effects of glucocorticoid treatment.

Purification and characterization of a Shigella conjugate vaccine, produced by glycoengineering Escherichia coli.

Shigellosis remains a major cause of diarrheal disease in developing countries and causes substantial morbidity and mortality in children. Glycoconjugate vaccines consisting of bacterial surface polysaccharides conjugated to carrier proteins are the most effective vaccines for controlling invasive bacterial infections. Nevertheless, the development of a multivalent conjugate vaccine to prevent Shigellosis has been hampered by the complex manufacturing process as the surface polysaccharide for each strain requires extraction, hydrolysis, chemical activation and conjugation to a carrier protein.

Temporomandibular dysfunction: internal derangement associated with facial and/or mandibular asymmetry.

The aim of this study was to observe the association between facial and/or mandibular asymmetry and internal derangement of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) in patients with temporomandibular dysfunction (TMD). The sample consisted of 17 patients with facial and/or condylar-mandibular asymmetry who had signs and symptoms of TMD. They were evaluated by means of clinical examination, panoramic radiography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and in some cases, computed tomography (CT) and scintigraphy.

Expression and characterization of a human cDNA that complements the temperature-sensitive defect in dolichol kinase activity in the yeast sec59-1 mutant: the enzymatic phosphorylation of dolichol and diacylglycerol are catalyzed by separate CTP-mediated kinase activities in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Dolichol kinase (DK) catalyzes the CTP-mediated phosphorylation of dolichol in eukaryotic cells, the terminal step in dolichyl monophosphate (Dol-P) biosynthesis de novo. In S. cerevisiae, the SEC59 gene encodes a protein essential for the expression of DK, an enzyme activity that is required for cell viability and normal rates of lipid intermediate synthesis and protein N-glycosylation.