Publications by authors named "Raja Elina Ahmad"

Article Synopsis
  • Most research on platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has focused on autologous (self-derived) sources due to concerns about safety and immune rejection with allogenic (donor-derived) sources.
  • Recent advancements have reignited interest in allogenic PRP, showing it to be safe, effective, and plentiful for cartilage repair.
  • A systematic review identified 12 relevant studies, primarily focusing on animal models, which indicated that allogenic PRP can enhance cell proliferation and cartilage repair, despite some conflicting results.
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  • - Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common chronic joint disease and leads to significant societal costs, but current treatments don't effectively stop or reverse the damage to cartilage, which is crucial in OA progression.
  • - The loss or malfunction of chondrocytes, which are the cells responsible for maintaining cartilage, is a key factor in cartilage breakdown, and their death through a process called apoptosis contributes to this deterioration.
  • - Autophagy, a cell survival mechanism that helps get rid of damaged components, could be a promising treatment target to prevent chondrocyte apoptosis and slow down OA; however, more research is needed to understand how autophagy and apoptosis are connected in these cells.
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  • - Tendon injuries are common and difficult to treat due to slow healing and poor tissue repair, often resulting in weakened, disorganized tissue.
  • - Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy shows promise for improving tendon repair, especially when MSCs are exposed to low oxygen (hypoxic) conditions, which boosts their ability to differentiate into tendon cells.
  • - The review explores how hypoxia-inducible factor-1-alpha (HIF-1α) is crucial in this process, particularly its interactions with growth factors like FGF-2 and TGF-β1, and highlights strategies to enhance HIF-1α to improve MSC therapy effectiveness.
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Introduction: Despite the common occurrence of streptokinase-induced hypotension among patients with acute myocardial infarction, the underlying pathophysiology remains obscure and poorly understood. Our study aimed to pool clinical evidence on the potential mechanism of streptokinase-induced hypotension through a systematic review of the literature.

Material And Methods: We conducted literature search from Medline, Scopus and Web of Science on clinical studies related to streptokinase-induced hypotension.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the role of epithelial sodium channels (ENaC) in the tenogenic differentiation of human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSCs) under mechanical strain.
  • hMSCs were subjected to uniaxial tensile loading, and analyses showed increased expression of tenogenic markers and ENaC subunits during stretching.
  • Blocking ENaC with a specific inhibitor led to a decrease in the expression of these tenogenic markers, indicating that ENaC is crucial for the differentiation of hMSCs in response to mechanical strain.
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Background: It has been previously suggested that the use of regenerative promoters, which include bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) or natural growth factors supplement such as platelet-rich concentrate (PRC) could promote cartilage regeneration. However, the notion that the concurrent use of both promoters may provide a synergistic effect that improves the repair outcome of focal cartilage injury has not been previously demonstrated. This study was thus conducted to determine whether the concomitant use of PRC could further enhance the reparative potential of MSCs encapsulated in alginate transplanted into focal cartilage injury in rabbits.

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Platelet-rich concentrate (PRC), used in conjunction with other chondroinductive growth factors, have been shown to induce chondrogenesis of human mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSC) in pellet culture. However, pellet culture systems promote cell hypertrophy and the presence of other chondroinductive growth factors in the culture media used in previous studies obscures accurate determination of the effect of platelet itself in inducing chondrogenic differentiation. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effect of PRC alone in enhancing the chondrogenic differentiation potential of human mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSC) encapsulated in three-dimensional alginate constructs.

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Previous studies have shown that platelet concentrates used in conjunction with appropriate growth media enhance osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSCs). However, their potential in inducing osteogenesis of hMSCs when cultured in serum free medium has not been explored. Furthermore, the resulting osteogenic molecular signatures of the hMSCs have not been compared to standard osteogenic medium.

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Platelet rich concentrate (PRC) is a natural adjuvant that aids in human mesenchymal stromal cell (hMSC) proliferation in vitro; however, its role requires further exploration. This study was conducted to determine the optimal concentration of PRC required for achieving the maximal proliferation, and the need for activating the platelets to achieve this effect, and if PRC could independently induce early differentiation of hMSC. The gene expression of markers for osteocytes (ALP, RUNX2), chondrocytes (SOX9, COL2A1), and adipocytes (PPAR-γ) was determined at each time point in hMSC treated with 15% activated and nonactivated PRC since maximal proliferative effect was achieved at this concentration.

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Monosodium -iodoacetate (MIA)-induced animal model of osteoarthritis (OA) is under-utilised despite having many inherent advantages. At present, there is lack of studies that directly compare the degenerative changes induced by MIA with the surgical osteoarthritis induction method and human osteoarthritis, which would further verify a greater use of this model. Therefore, we compared the histological, biochemical and biomechanical characteristics in rat model using MIA against the anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) and human cartilage with clinically established osteoarthritis.

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Background: In many pre-clinical studies of cartilage tissue, it has been generally assumed that the major difference of the tissue between the species is the tissue thickness, which is related to the size of the animal itself. At present, there appear to be lack of studies demonstrating the relationship between chondrocyte densities, protein content, gene expressions and cartilage thickness in the various animal models that are commonly used. The present study was conducted to determine whether or not chondrocyte density, proteoglycan/protein content and selective chondrocyte gene expression are merely related to the cartilage thickness (thus animal size), and not the intrinsic nature of the species being investigated.

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The use of growth differentiation factor 5 (GDF-5) in damaged tendons has been shown to improve tendon repair. It has been hypothesized that further improvements may be achieved when GDF-5 is used to promote cell proliferation and induce tenogenic differentiation in human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). However, the optimal conditions required to produce these effects on hMSCs have not been demonstrated in previous studies.

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Article Synopsis
  • Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) show promise for repairing cartilage injuries, but their effectiveness compared to traditional autologous chondrocyte (autoC) treatments is not fully understood.
  • A study on New Zealand White rabbits assessed cartilage regeneration after treating defects with either allogenic MSCs (alloMSCs) or autoC, finding higher Brittberg scores in the alloMSC group, although both treatments yielded similar overall results.
  • The findings suggest that alloMSCs are comparably effective to autoC for cartilage defect repair and support the potential of MSCs in clinical therapies.
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Chondrogenic differentiated mesenchymal stem cells (CMSCs) have been shown to produce superior chondrogenic expression markers in vitro. However, the use of these cells in vivo has not been fully explored. In this study, in vivo assessment of cartilage repair potential between allogenic-derived chondrogenic pre-differentiated mesenchymal stem cells and undifferentiated MSCs (MSCs) were compared.

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