Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a common cause of end-stage renal disease. Antihypertensive agents are used clinically to inhibit the progression of CKD, but cannot prevent eventual renal failure. This study investigated the effect of Tanshinone IIA, an active component of Salvia miltiorrhiza, in rats suffering from CKD induced by 5/6 nephrectomy. After development of renal insufficiency, the rats were treated with Tanshinone IIA (10 mg/kg) for 8 weeks. Serum creatinine, angiotensin II (Ang II), transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) and collagen IV levels were significantly reduced in Tanshinone IIA treated rats compared with a control group. In addition, Tanshinone IIA suppressed increases in urinary protein excretion in CKD rats. These findings suggest that chronic oral administration of Tanshinone IIA can improve renal dysfunction associated with CKD.

This study was performed to analyze epidemiological and molecular characteristics of coxsakievirus (CV) B1 infection associated with severe neonatal illness cases and death in Korea during 2008-2009. Through a nationwide surveillance program, specimens were collected from 104 patients infected with CVB1. The detection of enteroviruses (EVs) from specimens was subjected to a diagnostic real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in the 5'-non-coding region (NCR). A semi-nested PCR was conducted to amplify sequences from the VP1 region and sequence comparison was performed with reference strains registered in Genbank. Male-to-female ratio confirmed approximately 5:4. The major clinical manifestation of patients infected with CVB1 was aseptic meningitis (55.8%). The other clinical symptoms were herpangina or hand-foot-mouth disease (22.1%) and neonatal sepsis (7.7%). The sequences of CVB1 isolates were divided into four genetic clusters (A-D) with at least 15% diversity between the clusters. Almost all the CVB1 isolates in Korea from 2008 to 2009 were in cluster D (except for 2 cases). The homology relationship was also similar between the Korean CVB1 strains and US strain (above 93%). It is possible that Korean CVB1 isolates found during 2008-2009 originated from the US strains found during 2006-2008. The identification of CVB1 in South Korea shows the potential of EVs to cause serious disease in an unpredictable fashion.

The precise aetiology of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) remains unclear; however, it is known that immunological inflammatory processes have a role in the pathogenesis of BPH initiation and progression. Nitric oxide synthase 2 (NOS2) inducible expression is closely correlated with prostatic disease, including prostate cancer and BPH. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between NOS2 polymorphisms and BPH. With a cohort of 205 controls and 229 BPH subjects, we genotyped three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the NOS2 gene, including rs2779248 (promoter, −278 T/C), rs10459953 (5′-untranslated region) and rs2297518 (exon 16, missense, Ser608Leu), using direct sequencing and restriction fragment length polymorphism. The genotypic and allelic frequencies between control and BPH subjects were compared, and the associations among the BPH subjects were analyzed. SNPStats, SNPAnalyzer and HelixTree programmes were used to analyze SNPs. There was no association on SNPs between control and BPH subjects. When BPH subjects were analyzed, there was no association on SNPs between the low and high prostate-specific antigen groups. However, one SNP (rs10459953, odds ratio [OR] = 0.44, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.29-0.65, P < 0.0001, in codominant model; OR = 0.23, 95% CI = 0.12-0.46, P < 0.0001, in dominant model; and OR = 0.46, 95% CI = 0.24-0.86, P = 0.015, in recessive model) was associated with prostatic volume in BPH. We detected a strong association in genotype frequencies of NOS2 SNP (rs10459953) between subjects with small and large prostatic volume in BPH. The result suggests that NOS2 may be associated with prostatic volume in BPH.

Current molecular methods that include PCR have been used to detect norovirus in many food samples. However, the protocols require removing PCR inhibitors and incorporate time-consuming concentration steps to separate virus from analyte for rapid and sensitive detection of norovirus. We developed an immunomagnetic separation (IMS) and a quantum dots (QDs) assay to detect norovirus eluted from fresh lettuce with Tris buffer containing 1% beef extract (pH 9.5). IMS facilitated viral precipitation with a 10-min incubation, whereas virus concentration using polyethylene glycol (PEG) requires more than 3 h and an additional high-speed centrifugation step to precipitate virus before reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) analysis. The fluorescence intensity of QDs was detected qualitatively on norovirus dilutions of 10(-1) to 10(-3) in a stool suspension (100 RT-PCR units/ml). The results suggest that a fluorescence assay based on IMS and QDs is valid for detecting norovirus qualitatively according to fluorescent signal intensity within the same virus detection limit produced by IMS-RT-PCR and PEG-RT-PCR.

This work describes the string sensor for the simple and sensitive detection of glucose which is based on Prussian blue (PB) modified graphite utilizing dipping. First, PB modified graphite (PB-G) strings are characterized by physical and electrochemical techniques to optimize the PB-G layer thickness. Then, glucose oxidase (GOx) is immobilized on PB-G string electrode with biocompatible chitosan overlayer (Chi/GOx/PB-G). The Chi/GOx/PB-G string electrode exhibits a sensitivity of 641.3 μA·mM−1·cm−2to glucose with a linear range of 0.03 to 1.0 mM (R2=0.9957) and a rapid response time (<3 s). Moreover, the Chi/GOx/PB-G string electrodes are less sensitive to common interference materials such as ascorbic acid, uric acid, galactose, and acetaminophen than to glucose. The Chi/GOx/PB-G string electrodes also show excellent reproducibility (<5% RSD). Therefore, our Chi/GOx/PB-G string electrodes can be simple, robust, and reliable tools for glucose sensing which can avoid complicated and difficult multistep fabrication processes. In addition, we expect that they have many potential applications in fields ranging from health care to food analysis, in particular where single use is favorable.