BACKGROUND The narrow host range of Mycobacterium leprae and the fact that it is refractory to growth in culture has limited research on and the biologic understanding of leprosy. Host genetic factors are thought to influence susceptibility to infection as well as disease progression. METHODS We performed a two-stage genomewide association study by genotyping 706 patients and 1225 controls using the Human610-Quad BeadChip (Illumina). We then tested three independent replication sets for an association between the presence of leprosy and 93 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were most strongly associated with the disease in the genomewide association study. Together, these replication sets comprised 3254 patients and 5955 controls. We also carried out tests of heterogeneity of the associations (or lack thereof) between these 93 SNPs and disease, stratified according to clinical subtype (multibacillary vs. paucibacillary). RESULTS We observed a significant association (P<1.00×10 −10) between SNPs in the genes CCDC122, C13orf31, NOD2, TNFSF15, HLA-DR, and RIPK2 and a trend toward an association (P = 5.10×10 −5) with a SNP in LRRK2. The associations between the SNPs in C13orf31, LRRK2, NOD2, and RIPK2 and multibacillary leprosy were stronger than the associations between these SNPs and paucibacillary leprosy. CONCLUSIONS Variants of genes in the NOD2-mediated signaling pathway (which regulates the innate immune response) are associated with susceptibility to infection with M. leprae.
Aim: Inflammation and oxidative stress are now recognized to be two important contributing factors to the development of atherosclerosis (AS). NADPH oxidase-4 (Nox4)-derived reactive oxygen species (ROS), NF-κB and MAPK play crucial roles in these processes. Luteolin, a flavone rich in many plants, can interrupt the molecular expression and inhibit the progression of inflammation and oxidative stress. The present study was designed to test whether luteolin inhibits TNF-α-induced inflammation and oxidative stress in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and identify some of the mechanisms underlying these effects.
Keywords: dasatinib, doxorubicin, ERK pathway, multidrug resistance, P-glycoprotein Abbreviations: MDR, multidrug resistance; P-gp, P-glycoprotein; DOX, doxorubicin; ERKextracellular signal-regulated kinase; P-ERK, phosphorylated extracellular signal-regulated kinase.Multidrug resistance (MDR) is one of the major obstacles to the efficiency of cancer chemotherapy, which often results from the overexpression of drug efflux transporters such as P-glycoprotein (P-gp). In the present study, we determined the effect of dasatinib which was approved for imatinib resistant chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) and (Ph C ) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treatment on P-gp-mediated MDR. Our results showed that dasatinib significantly increased the sensitivity of P-gp-overexpressing MCF-7/Adr cells to doxorubicin in MTT assays; thus lead to an enhanced cytotoxicity of doxorubicin in MCF-7/Adr cells. Additionally, dasatinib increased the intracellular accumulation, inhibited the efflux of doxorubicin in MCF-7/Adr cells, and significantly enhanced doxorubicin-induced apoptosis in MCF-7/Adr cells. Further studies showed that dasatinib altered the expression levels of mRNA, protein levels of P-gp, and the phosphorylation of signal-regulated kinase (ERK) both in time-dependent (before 24 h) and dose-dependent manners at concentrations that produced MDR reversals. In conclusion, dasatinib reverses P-gpmediated MDR by downregulating P-gp expression, which may be partly attributed to the inhibition of ERK pathway. Dasatinib may play an important role in circumventing MDR when combined with other conventional antineoplastic drugs.
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