• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.7 no.1_2
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• pp.53-57
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• 1992

Amount of lead burden in a tissue reflects poisoning of lead in that tissue, so is the removal of lead directly connected to curement of lead poisoning. The purpose of present study was to investigate the relative effects of penicillamine and thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide (TTFD) or thiamine propyl disulfide (TPD) in the removal of lead from rat brain tissue treated with excessive lead. Wistar rat pups of both sexes were used in this experiment. Within 1 day of parturition, experimental mothers nursing their pups as well as rat pups were given drinking water containing 0.2% lead acetate, TTFD 20mg/1.2 L (2 mg/kg/day), TPD 20 mg/1.2 L (2mg/kg/day), penicillamine 40 mg/1.2 L (40 mg/kg/day), 0.2% lead acetate+TTFD 20mg/1.2 L (2 mg/kg/day), 0.2% lead acetate+ TPD 20 mg/1.2 L (2 mg/kg/day) or 0.2% lead acetate+ penicillamine 40 mg/1.2 L (40 mg/kg/day) ad libitum, throughout the entire period of experiment. Rat pups in the control group received normal tap water. The animals were sacrificed by decapitation on the day when they become 2 or 8 weeks of age. Brains were dissected into five regions: telencephalon, diencephalon, midbrain, pons/medulla and cerebellum. The dissected brain tissues were lyophillized and then solubilized by acid mixture (nitric acid + sulfuric acid). Lead levels in the solubilized brain tissues were measured by the inductively coupled plasma. In lead-exposed rats, lead levels were significantly higher than those of control group in all brain legions, lead levels in brain regions of TTFD or TPD group were generally lower than those of control group. The simultaneous administration of lead with TTFD or TPD to animals caused significant decrement of lead from all brain regions. In the elimination of lead from brain regions, effectiveness of TTFD or TPD was equivalant to penicillamine.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.72-83
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• 2003

Objective : The goal of the present study was to investigate the protective effect of Gamiheechum-tang (Jiaweixiqian-tang; GHCT) on brain tissue damage from chemical or ischemic insults. Methods : Levels of cultured cortical neuron death caused by toxic chemicals were measured by LDH release assay. Neuroprotective effects of GHCT on brain tissues were examined in vivo by ischemic model of middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion. Results : Animal groups treated with GBCT showed significantly decreased hypertension, and reduced levels of aldosterone, dopamine, and epinephrine in the plasma. GHCT treatments ($l0-200\mu\textrm{g}/ml$) significantly decreased cultured cortical neuron death mediated by AMPA, kainate, BSO, or Fe2+ when measured by LDH release assay. Yet, cell death mediated by NMDA was effectively protected by GHCT at the highest concentration examined ($200\mu\textrm{g}/ml$). In the in vivo experiment examining brain damage by MCA occlusion, affected brain areas by ischemic damage and edema were significantly less in animal groups administered with GHCT compared to the non-treated control group. Neurological examinations of forelimbs and hindlimbs showed that GHCT treatment improved animals' recovery from ischemic injury. Moreover, the extent of injury in cortical and hippocampal pyramidal neurons in ischemic rats was much reduced by GHCT, whose morphological features were similarly observed in non-ischemic animals. Conclusion : The present data suggest that GBCT may play an important role in protecting brain tissues from chemical or ischemic injuries.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.321-332
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• 2019

The brain is the most common metastatic site of lung adenocarcinoma; however, the mechanism of this selective metastasis remains unclear. We aimed to verify the hypothesis that exposure of tumor cells to the brain microenvironment leads to changes in their gene expression, which promotes their oriented transfer to the brain. A549 and H1299 lung adenocarcinoma cells were exposed to human astrocyte-conditioned medium to simulate the brain microenvironment. Microarray analysis was used to identify differentially expressed genes, which were confirmed by quantitative real-time PCR and western blotting. Knockdown experiments using microRNAs and the overexpression of genes by cell transfection were performed in addition to migration and invasion assays. In vitro findings were confirmed in clinical specimens using immunohistochemistry. We found and confirmed a significant increase in insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 (IGFBP3) levels. Our results also showed that the up-regulation of IGFBP3 promoted A549 cell epithelial-mesenchymal transition, migration, and invasion, while the knockdown of IGFBP3 resulted in decreased cell motility. We also found that Transforming growth factor-${\beta}$ (TGF-${\beta}$)/Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 4 (Smad4)-induced epithelial-mesenchymal transition was likely IGFBP3-dependent in A549 cells. Finally, expression of IGFBP3 was significantly elevated in pulmonary cancer tissues and intracranial metastatic tissues. Our data indicate that up-regulation of IGFBP3 might mediate brain metastasis in lung adenocarcinoma, which makes it a potential therapeutic target.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.142-147
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• 2015

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the potential effects of mild hypoxia in the mature and immature brain. Methods: We prepared organotypic slice cultures of the hippocampus and used hippocampal tissue cultures at 7 and 14 days in vitro (DIV) to represent the immature and mature brain, respectively. Tissue cultures were exposed to 10% oxygen for 60 minutes. Twenty-four hours after this hypoxic insult, propidium iodide fluorescence images were obtained, and the damaged areas in the cornu ammonis 1 (CA1), CA3, and dentate gyrus (DG) were measured using image analysis. Results: In the 7-DIV group compared to control tissue, hypoxia-exposed tissue showed decreased damage in two regions (CA1: $5.59%{\pm}2.99%$ vs. $4.80%{\pm}1.37%$, P=0.900; DG: $33.88%{\pm}12.53%$ vs. $15.98%{\pm}2.37%$, P=0.166), but this decrease was not statistically significant. In the 14-DIV group, hypoxia-exposed tissue showed decreased damage compared to control tissues; this decrease was not significant in the CA3 ($24.51%{\pm}6.05%$ vs. $18.31%{\pm}3.28%$, P=0.373) or DG ($15.72%{\pm}3.47%$ vs. $9.91%{\pm}2.11%$, P=0.134), but was significant in the CA1 ($50.91%{\pm}5.90%$ vs. $32.30%{\pm}3.34%$, P=0.004). Conclusion: Although only CA1 tissues cultured for 14 DIV showed significantly less damage after exposure to hypoxia, the other tissues examined in this study showed a tendency towards less damage after hypoxic exposure. Therefore, mild hypoxia might play a protective role in the brain.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.345-351
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to assess clinical proton MR spectroscopy (MRS) as a noninvasive method for evaluating brain tumor malignancy at 3T high field system. Using 3T MRI/MRS system, localized water-suppressed single-voxe1 technique in patients with brain tumors was employed to evaluate spectra with peaks of N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), choline-containing compounds (Cho), creatine/phosphocreatine (Cr) and lactate. On the basis of Cr, these peak areas were quantificated as a relative ratio. The variation of metabolites measurements of the designated region in 10 normal volunteers was less than 10%. Normal ranges of NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr ratios were 1.67${\pm}$018 and 1.16${\pm}$0.15, respectively. NAA/Cr ratio of all tumor tissues was significantly lower than that of the normal tissues (p=0.005), but Cho/Cr ratio of all tumor tissue was significantly higher (p=0.001). Cho/Cr ratio of high-grade gliomas was significantly higher than that of low-grade gliomas (P=0.001). Except 4 menigiomas, lactate signal was observed in all tumor cases. The present study demonstrated that the neuronal degradation or loss was observed in all tumor tissues. Higher grade of brain tumors was correlated with higher Cho/Cr ratio, indicating a significant dependence of Cho levels on malignancy of gliomas. Our results suggest that clinical proton MR spectroscopy could be useful to predict tumor malignancy.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.347-355
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• 2004

This study was undertaken in order to evaluate effects of methanol extracts of Stachys sieboldii MIQ and its related enzyme activities in brain tissues of rats. Sprague-Dawley(SD) male rats were fed within a control group, which is a basic diet group. The experimental diet group was given 100 and 200 mg/kg to supervise 100 and 200 mg/kg body weight per day for 20 days. Lipid peroxide levels and acetylcholine esterase activity in brain tissues were slightly decreased at a dose dependent manner, in vitro. Lipid peroxide levels were also decreased at a dose dependent manner; methanolic extracts of Stachys sieboldii MIQ demonstrated significant inhibitory effects, in vivo. Monoamine oxidase and xanthine oxidase activities were significantly inhibited in the brain tissues of experimental group compared to control group and the ratio of type conversion of xanthine oxidase were decreased.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2020.11a
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• pp.25-28
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• 2020

Automatic segmentation of brain tissues such as WM, GM, and CSF from brain MRI scans is helpful for the diagnosis of many neurological disorders. Accurate segmentation of these brain structures is a very challenging task due to low tissue contrast, bias filed, and partial volume effects. With the aim to improve brain MRI segmentation accuracy, we propose an end-to-end convolutional based U-SegNet architecture designed with multi-scale kernels, which includes cascaded dilated convolutions for the task of brain MRI segmentation. The multi-scale convolution kernels are designed to extract abundant semantic features and capture context information at different scales. Further, the cascaded dilated convolution scheme helps to alleviate the vanishing gradient problem in the proposed model. Experimental outcomes indicate that the proposed architecture is superior to the traditional deep-learning methods such as Segnet, U-net, and U-Segnet and achieves high performance with an average DSC of 93% and 86% of JI value for brain MRI segmentation.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.25-31
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• 1970

Tissue homogenates of Ehrlich ascites tumor tissues and several normal tissue of mice were incubated separately in medium maintaining $C^{14}$_acetate concentrations of 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 mg%, in order to determine maximum oxidative rates of acetate. In every incubation experiments, respiratory $CO_2$ samples rapped by alkaline which was placed in the center well of the incubation blask were analyzed for total $CO_2$ Production rates and their radoactivies. The fractions of $CO_2$ from medium acetate to total $CO_2$ production rate were obtained with relative specific activities (RSA) which were calculated by ratio between specific activities (SA) of $CO_2$ and medium $CO^{14}$_acetate and $CO_2$ production rates from medium acetate were calculated from RSA and total $CO_2$ production rates. Maximum plateau values of oxidative rates described above were determined at incubation experiments of various concentrations of medium acetate and compared the oxidative rates of acetate of tumor with those of normal tissues such as kidney, brain and liver. Maximum plateau values of total $CO_{2}$ Production rates were obtained at acetate concentration of 20 mg% and represent $25.0{\pm}0.54\;{\mu}M/hr/gm$ in the brain, $16.3{\pm}2.5$ in the kidney, $9.1{\pm}1.78$ in the liver and $11.5{\pm}3.2\;{\mu}M/hr/gm$ in the ascites tuners. Substancial $CO_2$ yield was observed in the tumor tissues as in the normal tissues. On the other hand, plateau values of RSA were $25.7{\pm}1.04%$ in thee brain, $9.1{\pm}0.72%$ in the kidney, $2.5{\pm}0.73%$ in the liver and $0.51{\pm}0.12%$ in the tumor tissues. $CO_2$ yields from the medium acetate, were 4.19 in the kidney, 2.28 in the brain, 0.228 in the liter and $0.059\;{\mu}M/hr/gm$ in the tumor tissue. These show wide range even in the normal tissue but remarkable decrease in the tumor tissue. This fact means that further oxidation of acetate was inhibited remarkably in the tumor tissue.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.134-147
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• 2019

Gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) are commonly used for enhancement in MR imaging and have long been considered safe when administered at recommended doses. However, since the report that nephrogenic systemic fibrosis is linked to the use of GBCAs in subjects with severe renal diseases, accumulating evidence has suggested that GBCAs are not cleared entirely from our bodies; some GBCAs are deposited in our tissues, including the brain. GBCA deposition in the brain is mostly linked to the specific chelate structure of the GBCA: linear GBCAs were responsible for brain deposition in almost all reported studies. This review aimed to summarize the current knowledge about GBCA brain deposition and discuss its clinical implications.

• International Journal of Oral Biology
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.135-141
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• 2011

Hertwig's epithelial root sheath (HERS) consists of bi-layered cells derived from the inner and outer dental epithelia and plays important roles in tooth root formation as well as in the maintenance and regeneration of periodontal tissues. With regards to the fate of HERS, and although previous reports have suggested that this entails the formation of epithelial rests of Malassez, apoptosis or an epithelial-mesenchymal transformation (EMT), it is unclear what changes occur in the epithelial cells in this structure. This study examined whether HERS cells undergo EMT using a keratin-14 (K14) cre:ROSA 26 transgenic reporter mouse. The K14 transgene is expressed by many epithelial tissues, including the oral epithelium and the enamel organ. A distinct K14 expression pattern was found in the continuous HERS bi-layer and the epithelial diaphragm were visualized by detecting the ${\beta}$-galactosidase (lacZ) activity in 1 week postnatal mice. The 2 and 4 week old mice showed a fragmented HERS with cell aggregation along the root surface. However, some of the lacZ-positive dissociated cells along the root surface were not positive for pan-cytokeratin. These results suggest that the K14 transgene is a valuable marker of HERS. In addition, the current data suggest that some of the HERS cells may lose their epithelial properties after fragmentation and subsequently undergo EMT.