Cushing syndrome in pregnancy, diagnosed after delivery.

Cushing syndrome (CS) is rare in pregnancy, and few cases have been reported to date. Women with untreated CS rarely become pregnant because of the ovulatory dysfunction induced by hypercortisolism. It is difficult to diagnose CS in pregnancy because of its very low incidence, the overlap between the clinical signs of hypercortisolism and the physiological changes that occur during pregnancy and the changes in hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis activity that occur during pregnancy and limit the value of standard diagnostic testing.

Patient Understanding of Hypoglycemia in Tertiary Referral Centers.

Background: Hypoglycemia is an important complication in the treatment of patients with diabetes. We surveyed the insight by patients with diabetes into hypoglycemia, their hypoglycemia avoidance behavior, and their level of worry regarding hypoglycemia.

Methods: A survey of patients with diabetes, who had visited seven tertiary referral centers in Daegu or Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea, between June 2014 and June 2015, was conducted.

Clinical Characteristics of Patients with Adrenal Insufficiency in a General Hospital.

Background: Adrenal insufficiency (AI) is a life-threatening disorder caused by the deficiency of adrenal steroid hormones. This retrospective cross-sectional study investigated the characteristics of patients with AI in Korea.

Methods: All consecutive patients with suspected AI who received care at a tertiary referral center in Korea in 2014 and underwent adrenocorticotropic hormone stimulation or insulin-tolerance testing were identified through a review of medical charts.

Effects of divalent cations on slow unblock of native NMDA receptors in mouse neocortical pyramidal neurons.

The N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) exhibits strong voltage-dependent block by extracellular Mg(2+) , which is relieved by sustained depolarization and glutamate binding, and which is central to the function of the NMDAR in synaptic plasticity. Rapid membrane depolarization during agonist application reveals a slow unblock of NMDARs, which has important functional implications, for example in the generation of NMDAR spikes, and in determining the narrow time window for spike-timing-dependent plasticity. However, its mechanism is still unclear.

HLA-A2 1 restricted peptides from the HBx antigen induce specific CTL responses in vitro and in vivo.

The HBx-derived, HLA-A2.1 restricted peptides, XEP-3, XEP-4, and XEP-6, induced activation of specific CTLs from patients with HBV in vitro. XEP-6 peptide induced the strongest response among the three peptides in CTLs from the blood samples of patients that were HBsAg positive.