• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.411-415
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• 2005

Purpose : This study was performed to determine the developmental expression pattern of nerve growth factor(NGF) in the urine of healthy children. It was hypothesized that NGF may contribute to the development of the spinobulbospinal micturition reflex that represents the adult micturition pattern. Methods : Voided urine was collected in 60 healthy children during the first 5 years of life(0-1 month, n=10; 1 month-1 year, n=10; 2 years, n=10; 3 years, n=10; 4 years, n=10). The urinary NGF was analyzed by using an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. Results were normalized based on creatinine or total protein in urine. Results : NGF was significantly greater among neonates compared to other age groups(P<0.05). NGF levels declined during 1 month to 1 year and increased by age 2 years. NGF levels at age 3 years were less than in neonates examined. When comparing the NGF levels according to continence in children over 1 year old, NGF levels were significantly lower in children with continence than in children with incontinence(P<0.05). Conclusion : These data suggest that NGF is involved in the achievement of continence and in mechanisms of bladder nerve growth and in the reorganization of bladder reflex pathway.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.71-80
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• 1990

New immunoassay systems for the detection of anti-sperm antibodies were developed. For this, sperm surface protein was purified by the immunoaffinity column prepared by the coupling of rabbit anti-human IgG antibodies to Sepharose-4B. Fraction eluted by tris-HCI buffer containing SDS showed a single band having molecular weight of about 60KD on electrophoresis. Enzyme HRP labelled goat anti-human IgG and chemiluminescence aminobutylethyl-isoluminol(ABEI) labelled rabbit anti-human IgG were used for ELISA and CIA, respectively. These two labelled conjugate bound well with human IgG. When serum dilution curves were made to titrate positive serums, two kinds of curves with steep and sluggish slopes were obtained Serum samples were categorized into 3 groups: positive, weak positive and negative based on slope of curve and O.D. values at 1:160 dilution of serum. When ELISA and CIA were compared to conventional method Kibrick test by the determinations of 62 male serums with different diagnosis, the results of ELISA and CIA agreed well, but both disagreed with that of Kibrick test. This study showed that purified sperm surface antigen can be used to develope solid-phase immunoassay systems such as ELISA and CIA which may eliminate the problems encounted the immobilization of living sperm in other tests.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 1983

${\beta}$-Glucuronidase from bull seminal plasma was partially purified by $(NH_4)_2SO_4$fractionation, two successive DEAE-cellulose columns, isoelectric focusing (pH 4 to 6) and Gel filtration on Sephadex G-200. Only one form of ${\beta}$-glucuronidase was obtained by isoelectric focusing at pH 5.13. Highly purified ${\beta}$-glucuronidase had specific activity of 34 units/mg protein and showed one major and some minor contaminants by disc gelk electrophoresis. The enzyme showed maximum activity at pH 5.2 and at $48^{\circ}C$. The enzyme was completely inhibited by 1,4 saccharo-${\alpha}$-lactone (5 mM). Albumin and 0.15 M NaCl increased the ${\beta}$-glucuronidase activity. Km of ${\beta}$-glucuronidase using phenolphthalein mono-${\beta}$-glucuronic acid as substrate was 2.9 mM and Vmax was $0.8{\mu}$mole/min. The enzyme appeared to be a glycoprotein by its binding to concanvalin·A. Rabbit and human sperm-acrosomal extracts and seminal plasma showed high ${\beta}$-glucuronidase activity.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.671-675
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• 2009

Prostate cancer has been a critical health problem due to an increase of prostate cancer-related deaths worldwide. Also, a frequent treatment option for prostate cancer is androgen ablation, but this treatment has a limited scope, especially for hormone-refractory cancer. There is an urgent need for the identification of alternative therapeutic strategies for prostate cancer. Previously, over one hundred species of dried-plant methanol extracts were tested for inhibitory effects on proliferation. One of them, Piper longum Linn. was selected based on its potent anti-proliferation effect. The dried root of P. longum Linn. was extracted with 100% methanol for 2-3 days and its extract was fractionated using chloroform. The chloroform layer was then subjected to column chromatography on silica gel, reverse phase-18 (RP-18) and Sephadex LH-20, in turn. Finally, the pure compound was obtained and identified as pipernonaline by NMR spectroscopic and physico-chemical analysis. In this study, anti-proliferation and cell cycle arrest effects of pipernonaline on human prostate cancer PC-3 cells were investigated using the MTT and PI staining, respectively. Our findings suggest that pipernonaline represents a dose-dependent growth inhibition pattern on PC-3 cells and, moreover, its growth inhibition is associated with sub-G1 and G0/G1 cell cycle accumulation in PC-3 cells. Also, these results provide an anticancer candidate for human prostate cancer.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.2657-2662
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• 2013

Background: Intraoperative sentinel lymph node biopsy has now become the standard of care for patients with clinically node negative breast cancer for diagnosis and also in order to determine the need for immediate axillary clearance. Several large scale studies confirmed the diagnostic reliability of this method. However, micrometastases are frequently missed on frozen sections. Recent studies showed that both disease free interval and overall survival are significantly affected by the presence of micrometastatic disease. The aim of this study was to determine the sensitivity and specificity of intraoperative frozen section analysis of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) for the detection of breast cancer micrometastasis and to evaluate the status of non-sentinel lymph nodes (non-SLNs) in those patients subjected to further axillary sampling. Materials and Methods: We performed a retrospective study on 154 patients who underwent SLN biopsy from January 2008 till October 2011. The SLNs were sectioned at 2 mm intervals and submitted entirely for frozen sections. Three levels of each section submitted are examined and the results were compared with further levels on paraffin sections. Results: Overall 40% of patients (62/154) were found to be SLN positive on final (paraffin section) histology, out of which 44 demonstrated macrometastases (>2mm) and 18 micrometastases (<2mm). The overall sensitivity and specificity of frozen section analysis of SLN for the detection of macrometastasis was found to be 100% while those for micrometastasis were 33.3% and 100%, respectively. Moreover 20% of patients who had micrometastases in SLN had positive non-SLNs on final histology. Conclusions: Frozen section analysis of SLNs lacks sufficient accuracy to rule out micrometastasis by current protocols. Therefore these need to be revised in order to pick up micrometastasis which appears to have clinical significance. We suggest that this can be achieved by examining more step sections of blocks.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.511-516
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• 2013

Bladder cancer is the seventh most common cancer in men that smoke, and the incidence of disease increases with age. The mechanism of occurrence has not yet been established. Potassium channels have been linked with cell proliferation. Some two-pore domain $K^+$ channels (K2P), such as TASK3 and TREK1, have recently been shown to be overexpressed in cancer cells. Here we focused on the relationship between cell growth and the mechanosensitive K2P channel, TREK2, in the human bladder cancer cell line, 253J. We confirmed that TREK2 was expressed in bladder cancer cell lines by Western blot and quantitative real-time PCR. Using the patch-clamp technique, the mechanosensitive TREK2 channel was recorded in the presence of symmetrical 150 mM KCl solutions. In 253J cells, the TREK2 channel was activated by polyunsaturated fatty acids, intracellular acidosis at -60 mV and mechanical stretch at -40 mV or 40 mV. Furthermore, small interfering RNA (siRNA)-mediated TREK2 knockdown resulted in a slight depolarization from $-19.9mV{\pm}0.8$ (n=116) to $-8.5mV{\pm}1.4$ (n=74) and decreased proliferation of 253J cells, compared to negative control siRNA. 253J cells treated with TREK2 siRNA showed a significant increase in the expression of cell cycle boundary proteins p21 and p53 and also a remarkable decrease in protein expression of cyclins D1 and D3. Taken together, the TREK2 channel is present in bladder cancer cell lines and may, at least in part, contribute to cell cycle-dependent growth.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.9
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• pp.328-334
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• 2012

Continuous fetal heart beat monitoring has assisted clinicians in assuring fetal well-being during antepartum and intrapartum. Fetal heart rate (FHR) is an important parameter of fetal health during pregnancy. The Doppler ultrasound is one of very useful methods that can non-invasively measure FHR. Although it has been commonly used in clinic, inaccurate heart rate reading has not been completely resolved.. The objective of this study is to improve detection algorithm of FHR from Doppler ultrasound signal with simple method. We modified autocorrelation function to enhance signal periodicity and adopted adaptive window size and shifted for data segment to be analysed. The proposed method was applied to real measured data, and it was verified that beat-to-beat FHR estimation result was comparable with the reference fetal ECG data. This simple and effective method is expected to be implemented in the embedded system.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.5427-5432
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• 2012

Background and Purpose: Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death among gynecologic cancers because of the lack of effective early detection methods. Accuracies of the human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) and mesothelin in detecting ovarian cancer have never been systematically assessed. The current systematic review aimed to tackle this issue. Methods: MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane databases were searched (September 1995-November 2011) for studies on the diagnostic performances of HE4 and mesothelin in differentiating ovarian cancer from other benign gynecologic diseases. QUADAS items were used to evaluate the qualities of the studies. Meta-DiSc software was used to handle data from the included studies and to examine heterogeneity. All included studies for diagnostic performance were combined with sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratios (DORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curves, and areas under the SROC curves (AUC). Results: A total of 18 studies and 3,865 patients were eligible for the final analysis. The pooled sensitivity estimates for HE4 (74.4%) were significantly higher than those for mesothelin (49.3%). The pooled specificity estimates for mesothelin (94.5%) were higher than those for HE4 (85.8%). The pooled DOR estimates for HE4 (26.22) were higher than those for mesothelin (24.01). The SROC curve for HE4 showed better diagnostic accuracy than that for mesothelin. The PLR and NLR of HE4 were 6.33 (95% CI: 3.58 to 11.18) and 0.27 (95% CI: 0.21 to 0.34), respectively. The PLR and NLR for mesothelin were 11.0 (95% CI: 6.21 to 19.59) and 0.51 (95% CI: 0.42 to 0.62), respectively. The combination of the two tumor markers or their combination with CA-125 increased sensitivity and specificity to different extents. Conclusion: The diagnostic accuracy of HE4 in differentiating ovarian cancer from other benign gynecologic diseases is better than that of soluble mesothelin-related protein. Combinations of two or more tumor markers show more sensitivity and specificity.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.112-118
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• 2020

This study was undertaken to examine the effects and to investigate the relevant mechanisms of overexpressing stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1) produced by engineered mesenchymal stem cells, in a neurogenic bladder (NB) rat model. Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats (N=48) were randomly divided into 4 groups comprising 12 rats each: control group, Injury group, Injury+imMSC group, and Injury+SDF-1 eMSC group. Rats in the Injury+imMSC group were treated with imMSCs, whereas the Injury+SDF-1 eMSC group were administered SDF-1 eMSCs. After 4-weeks therapy, the bladder and pelvic nerve (PN) tissues were examined by subjecting to Masson's trichrome staining and immunofluorescence. Administration of SDF-1 eMSC resulted in improved smooth muscle content in the bladder tissue, significantly increased β-III tubulin expression of the PN, and enhanced SDF-1 expression (P<0.05). The bladder wall repair can be attributed to the overexpression of SDF-1 by SDF-1 eMSCs. Significantly increased SDF-1 expression was obtained in the Injury+SDF-1 eMSC group (P<0.05). The crushed PN also showed significant recovery in the Injury+SDF-1 eMSC group (P<0.05). In conclusion, our results indicate that SDF-1 eMSCs express more SDF-1 in vivo, thereby facilitating the repair of injured nerve and recovery of NB in rats.

• Journal of Embryo Transfer
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.299-305
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• 2016

Although cryopreservation of sperm is routinely used for clinical requirement, it has some problems, such as high generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cold-shock. To reduce the detrimental damage in sperm, anti-oxidants were added to cryoprotectant for sperm. Curcumin is one of anti-oxidants, which are added in cryoprotectants. However, recent studies have demonstrated that curcumin decreases sperm viability and motility. This study was performed to identify the effect of curcumin on hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$)-exposed bovine sperm, which were cryopreserved-thawed. In $H_2O_2$-exposed bovine sperm, reactive oxygen species (ROS) were significantly reduced by treatment with curcumin in a dose-dependent manner (p < 0.05). Among tested concentrations of curcumin (1 to $50{\mu}M$), 30 and $50{\mu}M$ curcumin showed anti-oxidant effect on $H_2O_2$-induced ROS generation. On the other hand, combination of 30 or $50{\mu}M$ curcumin with anti-oxidant $H_2O_2$ increased the percentage of apoptotic sperm compared to only $H_2O_2$ treatment. Sperm viability was also decreased in the combination of 30 or $50{\mu}M$ curcumin with $H_2O_2$ as judged by FDA/PI staining. $H_2O_2$-induced decrease in sperm progressive motility was recovered by treatment with $1{\mu}M$ curcumin. These results show that high concentration of curcumin has anti-oxidant effect, but it has also cytotoxic effect on bovine sperm. Sperm viability and motility might be more affected by cytotoxic signals of curcumin compared to antioxidant signals.