Vitamin A Deficiency during the Perinatal Period and First Weeks of Life Modifies Vitamin A and Lipid Postprandial Metabolism in Both Female and Male Young Rats.

Scope: The effect of vitamin A deficiency on vitamin A and lipid postprandial metabolism in young rats is addressed, considering the effect of sex.

Methods And Results: Sprague-Dawley rats are fed either 400 UI.kg vitamin A diet (vitamin A-deficient (VAD) diet) or 2300 UI.

The aminosterol Claramine inhibits β-secretase 1-mediated insulin receptor cleavage.

The cleavage of the insulin receptor by β-secretase 1 (BACE1) in the liver increases during diabetes, which contributes to reduce insulin receptor levels and impair insulin signaling. However, the precise signaling events that lead to this increased cleavage are unclear. We showed that BACE1 cleaves the insulin receptor in the early secretory pathway.

A Citrullus colocynthis fruit extract acutely enhances insulin-induced GLUT4 translocation and glucose uptake in adipocytes by increasing PKB phosphorylation.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad is a common fruit in traditional medicine and used as remedy against various diseases, especially diabetes. Up to now, its anti-diabetic effects have been fully attributed to its enhancement of pancreatic insulin secretion.

2',7'-dichlorofluorescin-based analysis of Fenton chemistry reveals auto-amplification of probe fluorescence and albumin as catalyst for the detection of hydrogen peroxide.

Fluorophore 2',7'-dichlorofluorescin (DCF) is the most frequently used probe for measuring oxidative stress in cells, but many aspects of DCF remain to be revealed. Here, DCF was used to study the Fenton reaction in detail, which confirmed that in a cell-free system, the hydroxyl radical was easily measured by DCF, accompanied by the consumption of H2O2 and the conversion of ferrous iron into ferric iron. DCF fluorescence was more specific for hydroxyl radicals than the measurement of thiobarbituric acid (TBA)-reactive 2-deoxy-D-ribose degradation products, which also detected H2O2.