[A correlation study between body mass index and exercise capacity in patients with chronic systolic heart failure].

Objective: To investigate the association between body mass index (BMI) and exercise capacity in patients with chronic systolic heart failure.

Methods: The elderly patients with chronic systolic heart failure were consecutively recruited from 2008 to 2011 in cardiovascular clinic of Zhejiang Hospital. All the participants underwent height and weight measurements and BMI was calculated with these two parameters.

Modeling the diffusion of nitric oxide produced by neuronal cells in brain ischemia.

Mathematical models of NO diffusion were established to investigate the role of nitric oxide produced by neuronal cells in brain ischemia. Results showed that NO synthesized at early stage of brain ischemia could diffuse to a far more distant than that of a resting state. We speculate the roles of NO produced by neuronal cells in brain ischemia might have two different effects, depending on its concentration.

Nitric oxide spatial distribution in single cultured hippocampus neurons: investigation by projection of reconstructed 3-D image and visualization technique.

Recent studies have revealed a non-homogeneous distribution of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) in neurons. However, it is not yet clear whether the intracellular distribution of NOS represents the intracellular nitric oxide (NO) distribution. In the present study, software developed in our laboratory was applied to the reconstructed image obtained from confocal slice images in order to project the 3-D reconstructed images in any direction and to cut the neuron in different sections.

The influence of oxygen-glucose deprivation on nitric oxide and intracellular Ca(2+) in cultured hippocampal neurons.

Nitric oxide (NO) was speculated to play an important role in the pathophysiology of cerebral ischemia. In this study, the effect of oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) on the cellular production of NO was investigated in cultured hippocampal neurons. Intracellular Ca(2+) was also detected as its closely relationship with NO.