FMRI was measured by the BOLD method using a gradient-echo EPI sequence with the following parameters: TE=30 ms, TR=3 s, flip angle 90°. The measured volume consisted of 39 continual slices of 2 mm in thickness and the size of the measured voxel (spatial resolution) was 2 x 2 x 2 mm (FOV=208 x 208 mm, matrix 104 x 104, reconstruction matrix 128 x 128, SENSE factor of 1.8). FMRI was performed in all the subjects. An alternation of a black and white checkerboard (Figure 1) was shown to the subjects during the fMRI acquisition. The alternation was in the form of colour inversion with the frequency of 2 Hz. During the resting phase, the subjects were shown a static cross hair placed in the middle of the visual field. Each measurement consisted of a five30-second blocks of active phase periods (10 dynamic scans) and five resting periods of the same length. Altogether, each measurement consisted of 100 dynamic scans and lasted 5 minutes. FMRI assessment was performed using SPM8 software. During the pre-processing, the data were motion corrected (realigned), corrected for slice timing, smoothed the Gauss filter with FWHM of 6 x 6 x 6 mm and finally normalized into the MNI_152 space. The subject-level statistic was created using a general linear model with the canonical hemodynamic response function (HRF) applied to the stimulation
By means of radioimmunoassay, the content of endogenous cortisol in the aqueous humour and plasma of 35 patients suffering from various types of glaucomas and 35 cataract patients was determined, and the ratio of the plasma to the aqueous humour cortisol levels was calculated. The highest cortisol level in both plasma and aqueous humour was found to occur in patients with open-angle glaucoma suffering at the same time from systemic hypertension. The lowest plasma to aqueous humour cortisol ratio was found in patients with secondary glaucoma treated with steroids. In woman suffering from open-angle glaucoma, the rising cortisol level in plasma with age contrasted to the decreasing cortisol level in aqueous humour. The authors suggest that there is an active interference with homeostatic mechanisms responsible for ensuring the stability of the eye inner milieu and a certain protection of the trabecular meshwork of the angle of the anterior eye chamber against noxious effects of the endogenous cortisol.
The occurrence of testosterone, estrone, and estradiol-17 alpha in aqueous humor and vitreous body of the rabbit eye was demonstrated. The identity of the steroid hormones was confirmed by their chromatographic properties, microreactions, and radiochemically by crystallization to constant specific activity of their labeled acetates. The levels of testosterone and estrogens in rabbit male and female plasma, aqueous, and vitreous were determined by radioimmunologic assay. The concentrations of the steroid hormones in plasma are higher than in aqueous and vitreous. However, testosterone in aqueous circulates in free form and lacks the binding to sexual hormone-binding globulin as in plasma.
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