A patient with non-Q wave acute inferior myocardial infarction

The occurrences of atrioventricular (AV) nodal blockade or right ventricular (RV) infarction in acute inferior myocardial infarction (MI) had been well recognised and signified a proximal right coronary artery (RCA) occlusion. However, they did not point out the extent of the RCA territory involved. We recently managed a patient with incomplete inferior MI in which ECG on presentation already showed (he infarct-related RCA as the dominant vessel having proximal occlusion. Various aggressive treatments have been taken subsequently.published_or_final_versio

Management of heart failure with current perspectives

Heart failure is defined as a pathophysiological state in which an abnormality of cardiac function is responsible for the failure of the heart to pump blood at a rate commensurate with the requirements of the metabolising tissues and/or to be able to do so only from an elevated filling pressure.' This abnormality in cardiac function is reflected by the occurrence of exercise intolerance. Although heart failure is known for a long time in medical history, this condition is still associated with high morbidity and mortality. Various studies have demonstrated around 50% mortality rate over 2-5 years or an annual mortality rate of about 25% in patients with left ventricular dysfunction.2'3 In addition, repeated hospital-isation for treatment of worsening heart failure has placed a severe strain on the health care system. In this article, the preventive and treatment strategies currently available for the management of heart failure will be discussed.published_or_final_versio

CRTC1 transcriptional coactivator is required for hepatitis B virus gene expression and replication

This journal suppl. entitled: Metabolism, Diet and Disease 2014: Cancer and metabolismConference Theme: Cancer and metabolismPoster Presentation: P31BACKGROUND: Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection occurs in over 400 million people worldwide, 15-40% of whom will terminally develop severe liver diseases including hepatocellular carcinoma. Although development of HCC is a multi-step process, high HBV DNA level is a major risk factor for disease progression. Transcription of HBV from the cccDNA template is essential for its replication and requires CREB transcription factor, a master regulator of cell metabolism. However, transcriptional coactivators that facilitate CREB-dependent activation of HBV transcription remain to be identified and characterized …published_or_final_versio

Targeting Btk/Etk of prostate cancer cells by a novel dual inhibitor.

Btk and Etk/BMX are Tec-family non-receptor tyrosine kinases. Btk has previously been reported to be expressed primarily in B cells and has an important role in immune responses and B-cell malignancies. Etk has been shown previously to provide a strong survival and metastasis signal in human prostate cancer cells, and to confer androgen independence and drug resistance. While the role of Etk in prostate carcinogenesis is well established, the functions of Btk in prostate cancer have never been investigated, likely due to the perception that Btk is a hematopoietic, but not epithelial, kinase. Herein, we found that Btk is overexpressed in prostate cancer tissues and prostate cancer cells. The level of Btk in prostate cancer tissues correlates with cancer grades. Knockdown of Btk expression selectively inhibits the growth of prostate cancer cells, but not that of the normal prostate epithelial cells, which express very little Btk. Dual inhibition of Btk and Etk has an additive inhibitory effect on prostate cancer cell growth. To explore Btk and Etk as targets for prostate cancer, we developed a small molecule dual inhibitor of Btk and Etk, CTN06. Treatment of PC3 and other prostate cancer cells, but not immortalized prostate epithelial cells with CTN06 resulted in effective cell killing, accompanied by the attenuation of Btk/Etk signals. The killing effect of CTN06 is more potent than that of commonly used inhibitors against Src, Raf/VEGFR and EGFR. CTN06 induces apoptosis as well as autophagy in human prostate cancer cells, and is a chemo-sensitizer for docetaxel (DTX), a standard of care for metastatic prostate cancer patients. CTN06 also impeded the migration of human prostate cancer cells based on a 'wound healing' assay. The anti-cancer effect of CTN06 was further validated in vivo in a PC3 xenograft mouse model

Effects of Acute and Chronic Cold Stress on Expression of Cyclooxygenase-2 and Prostaglandin E Synthase mRNA in Quail Intestine

The cold temperature, a common environmental stress, reduces the immunity and re-production activities of the poultry. This study aims to investigate the role of acute and chronic cold exposure in the regulation of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and prostaglandin E synthase (PTGES) expression in the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum of quail. A total of 96 quail with 15 days of age were randomly allocated into 12 groups (8 each group) for exposure to acute (up to 12 h) and chronic (up to 20 days) cold temperature (12±1°C). After that, different segments of the intestine were harvested and subjected to morphology observations under the light and electronic microscopes. qRT-PCR was performed to analyze expression of COX-2 and PTGES, and DNA sequencing was performed to analyze PCR products. The data showed that under acute cold stress, expression of COX-2 and PTGES mRNA was first decreased and then increased in the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum of quail. However, chronic cold stress induced expression of COX-2 and PTGES mRNA in the duodenum, jejunum and ileum of quail, which was then reduced after 20 days of cold exposure. Morphologically, significant changes were also observed in the duodenum, jejunum and ileum after both acute and chronic cold stresses to the animals. The data from the current study indicated that both acute and chronic cold stresses were able to induce inflammation responses in the duodenum, jejunum and ileum, which might be due to the cold-damaged intestinal morphology

Effects of increased cholesterol level on BK channels

published_or_final_versionThe 16th Medical Resarch Conference (MRC), The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, 22 January 2011. In Hong Kong Medical Journal, 2011, v. 17, suppl. 1, p. 61, abstract no. 10

New Constraints (and Motivations) for Abelian Gauge Bosons in the MeV-TeV Mass Range

We survey the phenomenological constraints on abelian gauge bosons having masses in the MeV to multi-GeV mass range (using precision electroweak measurements, neutrino-electron and neutrino-nucleon scattering, electron and muon anomalous magnetic moments, upsilon decay, beam dump experiments, atomic parity violation, low-energy neutron scattering and primordial nucleosynthesis). We compute their implications for the three parameters that in general describe the low-energy properties of such bosons: their mass and their two possible types of dimensionless couplings (direct couplings to ordinary fermions and kinetic mixing with Standard Model hypercharge). We argue that gauge bosons with very small couplings to ordinary fermions in this mass range are natural in string compactifications and are likely to be generic in theories for which the gravity scale is systematically smaller than the Planck mass - such as in extra-dimensional models - because of the necessity to suppress proton decay. Furthermore, because its couplings are weak, in the low-energy theory relevant to experiments at and below TeV scales the charge gauged by the new boson can appear to be broken, both by classical effects and by anomalies. In particular, if the new gauge charge appears to be anomalous, anomaly cancellation does not also require the introduction of new light fermions in the low-energy theory. Furthermore, the charge can appear to be conserved in the low-energy theory, despite the corresponding gauge boson having a mass. Our results reduce to those of other authors in the special cases where there is no kinetic mixing or there is no direct coupling to ordinary fermions, such as for recently proposed dark-matter scenarios.Comment: 49 pages + appendix, 21 figures. This is the final version which appears in JHE

Holographic Superconductors from Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton Gravity

We construct holographic superconductors from Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity in 3+1 dimensions with two adjustable couplings $\alpha$ and the charge $q$ carried by the scalar field. For the values of $\alpha$ and $q$ we consider, there is always a critical temperature at which a second order phase transition occurs between a hairy black hole and the AdS RN black hole in the canonical ensemble, which can be identified with the superconducting phase transition of the dual field theory. We calculate the electric conductivity of the dual superconductor and find that for the values of $\alpha$ and $q$ where $\alpha/q$ is small the dual superconductor has similar properties to the minimal model, while for the values of $\alpha$ and $q$ where $\alpha/q$ is large enough, the electric conductivity of the dual superconductor exhibits novel properties at low frequencies where it shows a "Drude Peak" in the real part of the conductivity.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures; v2, typos corrected; v3, refs added, to appear in JHE

Ubiquitination and proteosome-dependent degradation of the activated form of human liver-enriched transcription factor CREB-H regulated by protein kinase A

Poster Presentation - Theme 1: Cell biologyCREB-H is a membrane-bound bZIP transcription factor which is mainly expressed in liver and small intestine. CREB-H plays important roles in the regulation of lipid metabolism, iron metabolism, gluconeogenesis and acute phase response. CREB-H is proteolytically activated by regulated intramembrane proteolysis to generate a C-terminal truncated form known as ...postprin