A 22-year-old woman with type Ia glycogen storage disease was referred to the endocrinology department with new-onset diabetes mellitus-glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) of 8.2%. She had suffered from repeated bouts of hypoglycaemia since the first days of her life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have exploited the experimental accessibility of the protozoan parasite Perkinsus olseni and its similarities to apicomplexan parasites to investigate the influence of specific drugs on its proliferation. For this purpose, shikimate and folate pathways present an attractive target for parasitic therapy given their major differences with mammalian pathways. Glyphosate, a potent inhibitor of the shikimate pathway enzyme EPSP synthase inhibited the in vitro proliferation of P.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPerkinsus atlanticus and P. marinus have been associated with mass mortality of bivalve molluscs. Perkinsus infections are routinely diagnosed by histology or the fluid thioglycollate medium (FTM) assay.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo types of iron chelators, desferrioxamine (DFO) and 2,2'-bipyridyl (BIP), selected for their differential binding properties, permeability and stoechiometry, were tested for their ability to inhibit the in vitro proliferation of the carpet shell clam parasite Perkinsus atlanticus. A tetrazolium-based assay was used to determine the effect of the drugs on cell proliferation. Both chelators were able to inhibit P.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPerkinsus atlanticus cultures were established either with trophozoites isolated from fresh gills, with hypnospores isolated from tissues incubated in fluid thioglycollate medium, or directly from infected hemocytes of carpet shell clams Tapes decussatus from Algarve (Southern Portugal), using a culture medium and conditions optimized for Perkinsus marinus. Perkinsus atlanticus isolates were cloned by limiting dilution, and their identity unequivocally established by PCR-based species-specific diagnostic assays, and by sequencing the complete rRNA gene cluster. The rRNA gene cluster is 7.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report results on the functional analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae ORF YNL065w, predicted to code for a protein belonging to the poorly characterized major facilitator superfamily (MFS) of transporters that are involved in multidrug resistance (MDR). YNL065w is important for a moderate increase of yeast tolerance to ketoconazole and to the cationic dye crystal violet; it protects the cell against short-chain monocarboxylic acids (C(2)-C(6)), but not against highly liposoluble acids such as octanoic acid or the phenoxyacetic-acid herbicides 2,4-D and MCPA; it is also a determinant of resistance to the antiarrhytmic and antimalarial drug quinidine. The encoding ORF was, thus, denominated the AQR1 gene.
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