Publications by authors named "Laflamme K"

The purpose of this article is to describe interprofessional relations in order to better understand their impact on nurse retention, while considering the operating room culture and its specific context. A focused ethnography was performed between September and October 2017 at a university hospital in an urban center in the province of Quebec, Canada. This was a secondary analysis of 11 nurses' semistructured one-on-one interviews.

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Soil biota can strongly influence plant performance with effects ranging from negative to positive. However, shifts in resource availability can influence plant responses, with soil pathogens having stronger negative effects in high-resource environments and soil mutualists, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), having stronger positive effects in low-resource environments. Yet the relative importance of long-term vs.

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An association between erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease has long been recognized, and studies suggest that erectile dysfunction is an independent marker of cardiovascular disease risk. Therefore, assessment and management of erectile dysfunction may help identify and reduce the risk of future cardiovascular events, particularly in younger men. The initial erectile dysfunction evaluation should distinguish between predominantly vasculogenic erectile dysfunction and erectile dysfunction of other etiologies.

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Eukaryotic core promoters are often characterized by the presence of consensus motifs such as the TATA box or initiator elements, which attract and direct the transcriptional machinery to the transcription start site. However, many human promoters have none of the known core promoter motifs, suggesting that undiscovered promoter motifs exist in the genome. We previously identified a mutation in the human Ankyrin-1 (ANK-1) promoter that causes the disease ankyrin-deficient Hereditary Spherocytosis (HS).

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The characterization of atypical mutations in loci associated with diseases is a powerful tool to discover novel regulatory elements. We previously identified a dinucleotide deletion in the human ankyrin-1 gene (ANK-1) promoter that underlies ankyrin-deficient hereditary spherocytosis. The presence of the deletion was associated with a decrease in promoter function both in vitro and in vivo establishing it as a causative hereditary spherocytosis mutation.

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Background: In the present study, an arterial tissue-engineered vascular media (TEVM) was produced from cultured human smooth muscle cells of the umbilical artery and we took advantage of this model to evaluate the regulation of contraction and the signalling pathways of polyphenols in arteries.

Methods: Cultured human smooth muscle cells of the umbilical artery were used to produce arterial TEVMs. Contraction experiments were performed to determine intracellular targets involved in the modulation of contraction by polyphenols extract from red wine, Provinols (SEPPIC Groupe Air Liquide, Paris, France).

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We have developed a tissue-engineering approach for the production of a completely biological blood vessel from cultured human cells. In the present study, we took advantage of this tissue-engineering method to demonstrate that it can be used to reproduce the subtle differences in the expression of receptors present on the media of native human blood vessels. Indeed, a small percentage (3 of 18) of native human umbilical cord veins (HUCVs) responded to endothelin, the most powerful vasopressor agent known to date, via both endothelin A (ET(A)) and endothelin B (ET(B)) receptor activation.

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Whether the adventitia component of blood vessels directly participates in the regulation of vascular tone remains to be demonstrated. We have recently developed a human tissue-engineered blood vessel comprising the three tunicae of a native blood vessel using the self-assembly approach. To investigate the role of the adventitia in the modulation of vascular tone, this tissue-engineering method was used to produce three vascular constructs from cells explanted and proliferated from donor vessel tunicae 1) an adventitia + a media, or only 2) an adventitia, or 3) a media.

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Background: Cardiovascular diseases remain a major cause of death and disability in the Western world. Among the various approaches adopted to counteract the morbidity associated with these diseases, surgical procedures and cardiac and vascular xenotransplantations or allotransplantations are routinely performed. The suitable vascular graft would be as close as possible to the native and healthy vessel composed exclusively of human components provided by the patient and would adapt to the donor's hemodynamics.

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Progress in tissue engineering now allows the recreation of functional blood vessels from cultured human vascular cells. When reconstructed under specific conditions, their structure, mechanical properties and function (especially vasomotricity) allow them to be used as human models for studying the biology and pharmacology of blood vessels. These models may help to circumvent the limitations in the obtention and use of native human blood vessels for experimental purpose.

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Medicare health maintenance organization (HMO) enrollees use more preventive care services than their fee-for-service (FFS) counterparts. This may be because those who enroll in HMOs have characteristics that make them more disposed to use preventive care. To investigate this possibility, we examined the use of four preventive care services by respondents to the 1996 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS).

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The inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor (InsP3R) is a ligand-gated Ca2+ channel responsible for the release of Ca2+ from intracellular stores in the response of a wide variety of cells to external stimuli. Molecular cloning studies have revealed the existence of three types of InsP3R encoded by distinct genes. In the study presented here, we used selective anti-InsP3R antibodies to determine the intracellular location of each InsP3R subtype in bovine aortic endothelial cells, bovine adrenal glomerulosa cells, and COS-7 cells.

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Within all endocrine cells, the inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP(3)) receptor plays an important role in regulation of the intracellular Ca(2+) concentration. In the present study we showed that a single short-term treatment with either N-ethylmaleimide (known to decrease InsP(3) receptor activity) or thimerosal (known to increase InsP(3) receptor activity) caused time-dependent biphasic effects on the InsP(3) binding activity of bovine adrenal cortex microsomes. The early potentiating effect of thiol-reactive agents translated into a 2-fold increase in binding affinity and Ca(2+) release efficiency.

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The inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP3) receptor forms a tetrameric channel responsible for the release of Ca2+ from intracellular stores. In the present study we showed that the experimental approach used to separate bound and free ligands may discriminate between two populations of InsP3 binding sites in bovine adrenal cortex microsomes. A large population of low affinity sites and a small population of high affinity sites were detected with centrifugation and filtration approaches, respectively.

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1. The IAP is used presurgically in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy to predict the effects on LTM and language of the planned temporal lobectomy. This prognosis presumes that a similar pattern of perfusion will result in anesthesia of the same cerebral regions in most patients.

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Estradiol (E2) and progesterone (P) play different roles in generating the preovulatory surge release of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LH-RH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). Results of our previous studies suggest that at least some of these steroid-specific effects may be mediated by beta-endorphinergic neurons. However, it is also possible that E2 and P differentially regulate responsiveness to opioids by altering mu-opioid receptor gene expression.

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