Pilot Study of Use of Nitric Oxide in Monitoring Multiple Dental Foci in Oral Cavity-A Case Report.

BACKGROUND: The most common cause of implant loss and deteriorating restoration aesthetics is infection and chronic inflammation of the tissues around the implants. Inflammation in the oral cavity, confirmed by clinical and histopathological examination and determination of exhaled nitric oxide, is a situation which may cause the complications on the whole human body. Elimination of the patology in the oral cavity in some cases is the only resonable treatment. The aims and objectives of our work is to present a gradual treatment of advanced infalmmation and present huge reduction stamp of inflammation measured with marker nitric oxide (NO) in exhaled air. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Simple treatment containing elimantion of pathology in the oral cavity was conducted. Patient that came to the dental practice suffered from the inflammation caused by lack of proper hygiene. First aid in this situation was to eliminate the inflammation which may affect negatively for general health. At first visit full hygienization was performed, at the second visit roots of abutment teeth and implants were removed under local anesthesia along with cystic changes. RESULTS: The hygiene precedures and extraction of the unsteady inflammationprosthetic restorations significantly decreased the level of NO in exhaled air. CONCLUSIONS: During the examination of the patient coming to the dental practice great attention should be paid to the coexistence of pathologies related to the oral cavity. Omission of a dental examination and possible elimination of odontogenic foci may affect the implication of the results of general diagnostics and subsequent treatment. Measuring the level of NO on exhaled air seems to be useful diagnostic method.

Identification of a Sesquiterpene Lactone from Arctium lappa Leaves with Antioxidant Activity in Primary Human Muscle Cells.

Many pathologies affecting muscles (muscular dystrophies, sarcopenia, cachexia, renal insufficiency, obesity, diabetes type 2, etc.) are now clearly linked to mechanisms involving oxidative stress. In this context, there is a growing interest in exploring plants to find new natural antioxidants to prevent the appearance and the development of these muscle disorders. In this study, we investigated the antioxidant properties of Arctium lappa leaves in a model of primary human muscle cells exposed to H2O2 oxidative stress. We identified using bioassay-guided purification, onopordopicrin, a sesquiterpene lactone as the main molecule responsible for the antioxidant activity of A. lappa leaf extract. According to our findings, onopordopicrin inhibited the H2O2-mediated loss of muscle cell viability, by limiting the production of free radicals and abolishing DNA cellular damages. Moreover, we showed that onopordopicrin promoted the expression of the nuclear factor-erythroid-2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) downstream target protein heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in muscle cells. By using siRNA, we demonstrated that the inhibition of the expression of Nrf2 reduced the protective effect of onopordopicrin, indicating that the activation of the Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway mediates the antioxidant effect of onopordopicrin in primary human muscle cells. Therefore, our results suggest that onopordopicrin may be a potential therapeutic molecule to fight against oxidative stress in pathological specific muscle disorders.

Retinoic acid maintains human skeletal muscle progenitor cells in an immature state.

Muscle satellite cells are resistant to cytotoxic agents, and they express several genes that confer resistance to stress, thus allowing efficient dystrophic muscle regeneration after transplantation. However, once they are activated, this capacity to resist to aggressive agents is diminished resulting in massive death of transplanted cells. Although cell immaturity represents a survival advantage, the signalling pathways involved in the control of the immature state remain to be explored. Here, we show that incubation of human myoblasts with retinoic acid impairs skeletal muscle differentiation through activation of the retinoic-acid receptor family of nuclear receptor. Conversely, pharmacologic or genetic inactivation of endogenous retinoic-acid receptors improved myoblast differentiation. Retinoic acid inhibits the expression of early and late muscle differentiation markers and enhances the expression of myogenic specification genes, such as PAX7 and PAX3. These results suggest that the retinoic-acid-signalling pathway might maintain myoblasts in an undifferentiated/immature stage. To determine the relevance of these observations, we characterised the retinoic-acid-signalling pathways in freshly isolated satellite cells in mice and in siMYOD immature human myoblasts. Our analysis reveals that the immature state of muscle progenitors is correlated with high expression of several genes of the retinoic-acid-signalling pathway both in mice and in human. Taken together, our data provide evidences for an important role of the retinoic-acid-signalling pathway in the regulation of the immature state of muscle progenitors.

A High-Throughput Screening Platform Targeting PDLIM5 for Pulmonary Hypertension.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a complex disease with multiple etiologic factors. PDLIM5, a member of the Enigma subfamily of PDZ and LIM domain protein family, contains an N-terminal PDZ domain and three LIM domains at its C-terminus. We have previously shown that overexpression of PDLIM5 prevents hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension (PH), and deletion of PDLIM5 in smooth muscle cells enhances hypoxia-induced PH in vivo. These results suggest that PDLIM5 may be a novel therapeutic target of PH. In this study, we aim to establish a high-throughput screening platform for PDLIM5-targeted drug discovery. We generated a stable mink lung epithelial cell line (MLEC) containing a transforming growth factor-ß/Smad luciferase reporter with lentivirus-mediated suppression of PDLIM5 (MLEC-shPDLIM5) and measured levels of Smad2/3 and pSmad2/3. We found that in MLEC, suppression of PDLIM5 decreased Smad-dependent luciferase activity, Smad3, and pSmad3. We used MLEC-shPDLIM5 and a control cell line (MLEC-shCTL) to screen the Prestwick library (1200 compounds) and identified and validated paclitaxel as a PDLIM5 inhibitor in MLEC. Furthermore, we showed that paclitaxel inhibited Smad2 expression and Smad3 phosphorylation in A549 cells. Our study suggests that this system is robust and suitable for PDLIM5-targeted drug discovery.