Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0406810 (NAME)
 13,345 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Since nitric oxide (NO) was recognized as a potent microbicidal agent, its role in host defence against intracellular parasites has been widely demonstrated. Recent evidence suggests a role for NO in combating extracellular and multicellular pathogens. This defence activity has been demonstrated toward the larvae of Schistosoma mansoni, microfilariae of Onchocerca linealis, several stages of Brugia malayi and protoscoleces of Echinococcus multilocularis. Many parasites suppress Th1 lymphocytes and directly inhibit NO production by inducing cytokines, such as IL-4, IL-10 and TGF-beta. In this study, we have investigated the effects of Anisakis simplex, an enhancer of Th2-dominant responses, on NO production. We studied the effect of crude extracts (CE) and excretory-secretory (ES) products on the induction of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated J774 macrophages. Stimulation of macrophages by LPS (1 microg/ml) increased nitrite concentrations in the culture medium at 24 h. Co-administration of A. simplex products with LPS, dose-dependently reduced the accumulation of nitrite. Nitrite production is due to induction of iNOS, and both L-NAME (N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester) (50 microM) and dexamethasone (10 microM) inhibited nitrite accumulation (54.2 and 92.1% inhibition, respectively). The inhibition of nitrite production by A. simplex was 42.1-97.8% in the range 4.75-76 microg/well (CE products) and 37.2-61.5% in the range 5-20 microg/well (ES products). Cell viability assayed by the mitochondrial-dependent reduction of MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) verified that the inhibition was not due to general cellular toxicity. However, the effects of A. simplex, were reduced when NOS had been induced by prior exposure to LPS and any possible further induction was blocked by cycloheximide, an inhibitor of protein synthesis.
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PMID:Effects of Anisakis simplex on nitric oxide production in J774 macrophages. 1022 90

Echinococcus multilocularis is a tapeworm having carnivores as final hosts, the red fox in particular, dog and cat less frequent. Its two host life cycle consists of a larval cycle which predominantly takes place in the liver of rodents such as mice but it can also develop in musk rats as intermediate hosts. Man can also be infected and serves as a wrong intermediate host. He develops an alveolar echinococcosis which usually ends lethal without medical treatment. The prevalence of E. multilocularis among 5.365 red foxes in Lower Saxony was monitored from 1991 to 1997. The data were analysed using spatial epidemiological methods. This evaluation is based on a significance test which was applied to the parameters of spatial autoregressive regression models (CAR) fitting to the data of two successive sampling periods from 1991-1994 and 1994-1997. The mean prevalence (spatial median) increased from 6% to 11%. The results of this epidemiological study which was restricted to Lower Saxony support for the first time the earlier reported assumption that the prevalence of foxes infected with E. multilocularis has risen in Europe in the last decade. The reasons for this development are still unknown.
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PMID:[Increase in the prevalence of Echinococcus multilocularis infection in red foxes in Lower Saxony]. 1141 78