Knowledge, practices, and perceived barriers on breast self-examination of female college students: Experience from a local higher education institution.

Background: Breast self-examination (BSE) is an inexpensive, harmless screening tool for finding breast cancer. This study examines the knowledge, practices, and perceived barriers of female college students from a local higher education institution (HEI) regarding BSE, focusing on those in the reproductive age group.

Materials And Methods: Three hundred sixty (360) female college students, including 226 health sciences majors and 134 non-health sciences majors, were selected through criteria sampling.

Secondary Dengue Infection Elicits Earlier Elevations in IL-6 and IL-10 Levels.

This study investigates the kinetics of interleukine-6 (IL-6) and interleukine-10 (IL-10) levels in dengue virus (DENV) infections during the febrile stage. Viremic patients were categorized into two phases based on anti-DENV IgM presence. Among 259 patients, 71% were in Phase I and 29% in Phase II.

Antifungal Activity of Ribosome-Inactivating Proteins.

The control of crop diseases caused by fungi remains a major problem and there is a need to find effective fungicides that are environmentally friendly. Plants are an excellent source for this purpose because they have developed defense mechanisms to cope with fungal infections. Among the plant proteins that play a role in defense are ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs), enzymes obtained mainly from angiosperms that, in addition to inactivating ribosomes, have been studied as antiviral, fungicidal, and insecticidal proteins.

Edodin: A New Type of Toxin from Shiitake Mushroom () That Inactivates Mammalian Ribosomes.

Ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) are a group of proteins with rRNA N-glycosylase activity that irreversibly inhibit protein synthesis and consequently cause cell death. Recently, an RIP called ledodin has been found in shiitake; it is cytotoxic, strongly inhibits protein synthesis, and shows rRNA N-glycosylase activity. In this work, we isolated and characterized a 50 kDa cytotoxic protein from shiitake that we named edodin.

The Biological Action and Structural Characterization of Eryngitin 3 and 4, Ribotoxin-like Proteins from Fruiting Bodies.

Ribotoxin-like proteins (RL-Ps) are specific ribonucleases found in mushrooms that are able to cleave a single phosphodiester bond located in the sarcin-ricin loop (SRL) of the large rRNA. The cleaved SRL interacts differently with some ribosomal proteins (P-stalk). This action blocks protein synthesis because the damaged ribosomes are unable to interact with elongation factors.