Acute ethanol exposure inhibits renal folate transport, but repeated exposure upregulates folate transport proteins in rats and human cells.

Deficiency of folate in heavy-drinking alcoholic populations can occur partly because of an increased urinary folate excretion. Ethanol directly reduces the reabsorption of folate in the renal proximal tubule (PT) by acting on either of 2 folate transport proteins, the reduced folate carrier (RFC) and the folate receptor (FR). This study was designed to determine the effects of ethanol on the transport of folate by PT cells and to examine the effects of ethanol on RFC and the FR protein expression.

Effects of HIV drug combinations on endothelin-1 and vascular cell proliferation.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive disease of the pulmonary vasculature involving endothelial and vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) proliferation, vasoconstriction, right ventricular hypertrophy, and eventually, right heart failure and death. PAH occurs 1000-fold more frequently in HIV patients than in the general population. Although conventional HIV therapy with nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) leads to regression of PAH, highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART; two NRTI plus a protease inhibitor) increases the incidence of HIV-associated PAH as much as twofold.

Effects of interleukin-1beta on food-maintained behavior in the mouse.

The present studies compared the effect of parenteral administration of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta) on food-seeking behavior under various conditions. IL-1beta (100 ng/mouse) decreased home cage consumption of sweetened milk to a greater extent in ad libitum fed mice than in mice that were food-restricted to maintain 85-90% of their free-feeding body weight. When operant responding for milk was maintained under a fixed-ratio 10 response (FR10) schedule of milk delivery, IL-1beta (30-300 ng/mouse) significantly decreased milk-maintained responding in mice fed ad libitum, but not in food-restricted mice.