Chronický unavový syndrom představuje casto se objevujici onemocněni zejmena v poslednich 15 až 20 letech. Ohroženi jsou zejmena lide žijici ve stresu, jedinci s oslabenou imunitou, trpici infekcnim onemocněnim nebo přetrenovani sportovci, např. po vysoke zatěži. Ultravytrvalostnim během se mohou vychylovat imunitni, fyziologicke a biochemicke parametry v ramci jejich fyziologickeho rozmezi. Cilem teto studie bylo zjistit, zda fyzicka zatěž ultravytrvalostnich sportovců vybraneho zavodu poskozuje organismus ve smyslu změny některých parametrů imunitniho systemu a jake výchylky od fyziologických hodnot nastavaji. Ze vzorků sera ultramaratonců byly na mis - trovstvi CR v běhu na 100 km před zavodem i po zavodě měřeny ctyři parametry – IgA, IgM, IgG a C3 složka komplementu. U hodnot IgA a IgG je statisticky významně zvýsena hladina po absolvovani zavodu ve srovnani s jejich hladinou před zavodem. Změny parametrů hodnot IgM a C3 složky komplementu nebyly statisticky významne. Hlavni fyziologickou ulohou IgG je aktivace komplementu, rozvoj sekundarni imunitni reakce a neutralizace bakterialnich toxinů. IgA jako sliznicni imunoglobulin napomaha imunitnim buňkam pohlcovat cizorode castice, bakterie a toxiny. Při vychýleni hodnot těchto parametrů je imunitni system vice ohrožen různými infekcnimi onemocně - nimi a objevuje se i chronický unavový syndrom.
Chronic fatigue syndrome - CFS is a disease that lasts about 6 months in adults and in children three months. Other names are myalgia encephalomyelitis, postviral immune syndrome, chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome. The reasons are biological, genetical, infectious or psychological. The paper discusses the history of chronic fatigue syndrome, epidemiology and its prevalence, clinical course, pathophysiology, diagnosis, therapy and prognosis, and also economics.
Vincenc Alexandr Bohdálek (Vincenz Alexander Bochdalek) is known primarily as an anatomist and pathologist and entered into the history of anatomy by describing a number of anatomical structures. Unfortunately his findings in the field of neuroscience are, with few exceptions, almost unknown. Current reviewtherefore partially fills a gap in the evaluation of the contributions of Bohdálek and based on available archival sources provides an overview of his results in the field of the nervous system research, which accounts for almost half of his works. He studied in detailpredominantly the innervation of eye, upper jaw, hard palate,auditory system and meninges, and surprisingly also dealt with the tissue regeneration. Bohdálek's works also show that he tried to find a physiological explanation to the observed anatomical and pathological findings, therefore he could be considered as a pioneer of the field, which is now called as func- tional anatomy. Present overview of his neuroscience works, including his complete bibliography,partially fills a huge debt to Bohdálek. Key words: nerves, brain, Bohdálek, 19th century.
Obesity is associated with an increased risk of premature death and represents a fast growing worldwide health problem. Although it has been long recognized that obesity is associated with an impaired insulin sensitivity, significantly increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, fatty liver disease, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancers, a subgroup of obese individuals called metabolic healthy obese seems to be protected from metabolic and cardiovascular obesity comorbidities. This article focuses on potential mechanisms underlying the healthy obese phenotype (protection against development of hepatic steatosis, inflammation of visceral adipose tissue, ectopic fat deposition and adipose tissue dysfunction) and on clinical relevance of this interesting subgroup of obese individuals. Additionally, definition, epidemiology and stability of healthy obese phenotype are discussed.
The results obtained during the studies of the microscopic structure of animal and human tissues by the famous 19th century Czech scientist Jan Evangelista Purkynĕ are already sufficiently described in a variety of older and newer publications. The contents of the present paper are an overview of the microscopes and other tools and instruments that Purkynĕ and his assistants and pupils used for research of tissue histology and during teaching, and in whose development there were directly involved. A brief overview of the development of the cutting engines suggests that the first microtome, from which all modern sliding microtomes are derived, originated under the supervision of Purkynĕ at the Institute of Physiology in Wroclaw. Purkynĕ and his assistants thus not only obtained priority results in the field of the structure of animal and human tissues, but also substantially contributed to the development of instruments and equipment for their study, which is often forgotten today.
Stem cells become an effective tool for treatment of a variety of defects and diseases. Recently, it appears that the therapeutic effect of stem cells lies not only in their integration and differentiation into cells of the tissue, but especially in their paracrine activity, i.e. the ability to secrete trophic and growth factors, cytokines and chemokines that have regenerative and anti-inflammatory effects. Conditioned medium (CM) containing secretory products of stem cells can thus be used in cell-free therapy which represents an alternative to the cell-based therapy, with advantage of lower risks, the possibility of allogenic administration and mass production. Preclinical studies confirm that the therapeutic effect of CM is comparable to the effect of the application of stem cells. The aim of this paper is to summarize the results of studies using CM from different types of stem cells in regenerative medicine and simultaneously develop an overview of the factors that can modify cellular secretion and the composition of CM.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is a disease detected in recent 15 or 20 years. Overtrained athletes, people living in stress, the ones with disturbed immunity or people suffering from some of the infectious diseases are the most threatened ones. During ultra-long-distance run, human immune, physiological a biochemical parameters drift of their physiological ranges. The values could increase or decrease. The samples of serum of ultramarathon runners, who took part in the National Ultramarathon Mastership, were collected and measured before and after the race. The parameters include IgA, IgM, IgG and C3 part of complement. Statistically important increases in IgA and IgG concentrations after the race were observed. The changes of concentrations of IgM and C3 part of complement was not statistically important. IgG is responsible for the activation of complement, secondary immune reactions and the neutralization of bacterial toxins. IgA in the role of muckal imunoglobulin helps immune cells to swallow heterogenous particles, germs and toxins. Our immune syst6m is more threatened by heterogenous infectious diseases and even the chronic fatigue syndrome.
Diabetes mellitus is a powerful risk factor for cardiovascular disease associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. Diabetic patients also have an increased incidence of heart failure which has been traditionally attributed to the presence of ischemic or hypertensive heart disease. However, the diabetic milieu is itself noxious to the heart, and cardiomyopathy can develop independent of elevated blood pressure, coronary artery disease or other risk factors with the potential to lead to a progressive development of heart failure. Diabetic car- diomyopathy is characterized by significant changes in function and structure of the heart. They have been studied in numerous diabetic experimental models in animals, mostly rodents. Revealing of potential underlying mechanisms of these pathophysiological alterations holds the promise to design new pharmacological strategies for diabetic patients. Our current review provides an update on functional and structural alterations in the diabetic heart and pathophysiological mechanisms of their development and progression.
Women, who abuse drugs during pregnancy, expose not just themselves but also their developing fetus to impairing effects, which can have potentially harmful and even long-term effects on the exposed children. For some years, methamphetamine (MA) has dominated the illicit drug market in the Czech Republic and Slovakia; additionally this drug is on the rise worldwide. It is one of the most accessible drugs, and in many cases the first choice drug for many drug-addicted pregnant women; in part due to its anorectic and stimulant effects. These women are rarely aware of the consequences of their behavior and their pregnancy is hardly ever a good enough reason for giving up drug use. These findings are supported by many experimental studies that show the damaging effects of maternal MA exposure on their offspring. There is growing evidence that exposure to MA in utero not only causes birth defects and delays in infant development, but also impairs the brain reward neural pathways of a developing offspring in such a way, that it could increase the predisposition for drug addiction later in life. Previously published animal studies have shown that offspring of mothers exposed to MA during pregnancy are more sensitive to MA when they encounter this drug later in adulthood. With respect to increased sensitivity, the term of sensitization has been introduced. It is defined as augmented psychomotor activity, which can be observed after drug re-administration following discontinuation of repeated drug exposure, and has been demonstrated to develop not only after repeated drug administration in adulthood, but also after chronic prenatal exposure. Results from our studies have shown that prenatal MA exposure can influence the sensitivity to the effects of some drugs, given as a challenge, in adulthood, specifically to those with a similar action mechanism. Our findings indicate that cross-sensitization between prenatal MA exposure and adult drug treatment cannot be simply termed as a general drug addiction, since it seems that the mechanism by which a drug impairs specific neurotransmitter systems plays an important role. The study findings show that although the offspring of MA-addicted mothers have altered sensitivity to certain drugs in adulthood, they do not display increased active drug-seeking behavior. Therefore, if we extrapolate the results to humans, it appears that there is a relatively little risk that a person, whose mother abused MA during pregnancy, will actively seek out drugs.
The mismatch repair gene MLH1 is a gene encoding the mismatch repair protein MutL homolog 1 (MLH1), important for repairing mutations generated during DNA replication. MLH1 absence has been observed in human gastrointestinal tumours as well as tumours of the female reproductive tract. We describe the functions of MLH 1 in cell cycle regulation and DNA mismatch repair. In this sense we discuss foriegn knowledges, in which the canine colon adencarcinoma is less frequently diagnosed in Czech and Slovak regions. We briefly described a molecular mechanism of evolution of MSI+ and MSI- colorectal carcinomas in human, and this was confronted with the current opinion of canine colon adenocarcinomas. We suppose that canine colon adenocarcinomas may occur in higher frequency, but they are underdiagnosed in the clinical veterinary practice. At the end, we describe two cases of dogs diagnosed with colorectal adenocarcinoma. The authors propose the centralized collection of colon adenocarcinoma samples from dogs, in one reference veterinary histopathological laboratory, which would analyse mismatch repair proteins.
Mitochondria are organelles producing macroergic compounds in basically all eukaryotic cells except mature erythrocytes. Mitochondria play an important role even in mammalian spermatozoa, in which mitochondrial ATP biosynthesis covers energetic demands connected with sperm movement (motility), maturation (including capacitation) and oocyte fertilisation. Mitochondrial localization and the existence of some specific mitochondrial-protein isoforms point at its indispensable role in fertility maintenance. Mitochondrial disorders are often manifested in tissues with high-energy demands (myopathy, neuropathy, cardiomyopathy), but mitochondrial dysfunction can be often detected also in other peripheral tissues and cells like spermatozoa. The main goal of this minireview is to summarize the most important findings about mitochondria producing cellular ATP supply and to present spermatozoa as a suitable and valuable biological material, which might be, despite of its uniqueness, a very useful material in clinical diagnostics of certain disorders including mitochondrial or neurodegenerative disorders.
The incidence of metabolic diseases, mainly obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and cardiovascular diseases is significantly increasing. Worldwide it is spoken of emerging epidemics, even pandemics, of obesity and T2DM with serious health and socioeconomic impact. There is also a shift in incidence of metabolic diseases to younger age groups. These facts have emerged extensive research effort focused on deeper understanding and eventual therapeutic influence of insulin resistance (IR), the key moment in etiopathogenesis of T2DM. The pathogenesis of IR is very complicated and still not fully understood. Well known are environmental factors (lack of physical activity, energy-rich diet). Key player in development of IR is adipose tissue, mainly visceral adipose tissue (VAT). Disturbances of VAT metabolism and subclinical inflammation are considered as important factors leading to development of IR. VAT is producer of biologically active substances and pro-inflammatory cytokines that are linked to development of IR and T2DM as well. Another factor influencing formation of IR and function of pancreatic β-cells is mitochondrial oxidative capacity together with oxidative stress. Discussed is being also the role of intestinal microbiome.
The works of Jan Evangelista Purkyne, Gabriel Valentin and Robert Remak showed that the nervous system contains not only nerve fibers, but also cellular elements. The use of microscopes and new fixation techniques have enabled the retrieval of accurate data on the structure of nervous tissue and in many European universities microscopes began to be widely used for histological and morphological studies. The present review summarizes the discoveries of the structure of predominantly vertebrate nerve tissue during the period from 1838 to 1865, made by prominent scholars who described the structure of fibers and cells of the nervous system and demonstrated that some nerve fibers are enwrapped by a sheath. In addition, the first attempts were made to make a cytoarchitectonic description of the spinal cord and brain. During the same time the concept of a neuroglial tissue was introduced, first as a tissue for "gluing" nerve fibers, cells and blood capillaries into one unit, but later some glial cells were described for the first time. Microscopic techniques started to be used for examination of physiological as well as pathological nerve tissues. The overall state of knowledge was just a step away from the emergence of the concept of neurons and glial cells.
Nitric oxide (NO) participates in the control of the cardiovascular system where two constitutive isoforms of NO-synthase were discovered: endothelial and neuronal. Both isoforms were observed in various cells, however, endothelial NO-synthase is predominantly present in the endothelium. Injury of the endothelium disturbs the balance between vasodilation and vasoconstriction and triggers different pathological alterations. In addition, whereas the intact endothelium protects vascular smooth muscle from oxidative attack, intervention in the vascular wall integrity increases the concentration of vascular superoxides, thus disturbing the effects of NO. Morphological evidence demonstrated that both isoforms of NO-synthase were expressed also in smooth muscle cells and functional studies revealed that different pathological interventions in endothelial function (such as oxidative stress or hypertension) were associated with NO generation in the vascular media. In this case, the generation of NO by vascular smooth muscle may represent a physiologically relevant compensation of endothelial NO deficiency. Whereas long-term inhibition of endothelial NO-synthase resulted in an unequivocal pattern of cardiovascular changes, inhibition of neuronal NO-synthase led to opposite effects, suggesting a specific position of neuronal NO-synthase in the regulation of cardiovascular tone. The specificity of endothelial or neuronal NO function seems to be related to a particular circulatory area and it is presumably determined by mutual interactions with other regulatory systems (sympathoadrenergic, renin-angiotensin, etc.).
Obesity currently represents one of the most important global health problems. According to the World health organization's prediction the number of obese patients in the adult population will increase to 700 million by 2015. The reasons of constantly increasing prevalence of obesity include a combination of genetic predisposition, the predominance of energy intake over energy expenditure due to easy availability of calorie-rich meals and permanently decreasing energy expenditure from physical activity. Understanding the precise mechanisms of food intake regulation is essential for development of body weight-reducing drugs with long-term effects. The central nervous system plays the main role in the regulation of food intake. This system is influenced by a number of long-acting and short-acting peripheral signals informing about the degree of saturation, the amount of energy reserves and the overall state of energy homeostasis. Hormones produced in the gastrointestinal tract play an important role in the regulation of food intake. The aim of this article is to summarize the significance of selected gut hormones in the regulation of food intake and to discuss their possible use in the treatment of obesity and its associated comorbidities.
Adenosine is not just a major component of adenine nucleotides and ribonucleic acids, but also has its own signaling functions. ExtraceIlular level of adenosine in an organism is strictly maintained through the balance between its formation, degradation and transport. Adenosine is formed by enzymatic degradation of adenosine triphosphate and eliminated by phosphorylation to adenosine monophosphate or by deamination to inosine. Transport of adenosine across the cell membrane is ensured by equilibrative and concentrative nucleoside transporters. All these processes participate in maintenance of adenosine level under normal conditions, but a balanced equilibrium can be disrupted in some pathophysiological situations. Extracellular adenosine as a signaling molecule binds to adenosine receptors, which may trigger via their cognate trimeric G proteins different signaling pathways. In this way, adenosine regulates energy homeostasis and affects the function of various organs. Targeted pharmacological manipulations of specific adenosine receptor subtypes or enzymes involved in its metabolism can potentially be used for therapeutic purposes.
Commensal bacteria of the digestive tract are separated from the brain by multiple barriers. Despite that bacteria residing in the intestine and the neurons of the brain interact by neural and humoral pathways. Mental processes, such as the stress response, may affect the composition and function of intestinal bacteria via the brain-gut axis. On the other hand, intestinal bacteria can influence the processes in the brain through the gut-brain axis. Disruption of these interactions may be involved in various alterations both in the function of the gastrointestinal tract and the brain function.
Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction is a means of optimising the oxygenation of blood in the lungs by redistributing the flow from poorly ventilated areas into well ventilated ones. It is caused by a direct effect of hypoxia on pulmonary vascular smooth muscle cells. For a vascular smooth muscle cell to contract, an increased intracellular concentration of calcium is needed. However, the contraction force can also be regulated independently of calcium concentration by calcium sensitivity. The sensitivity is regulated mainly by activation/deactivation of myosin light chain phosphatase. Several metabolic pathways converge on this enzyme. The increase in calcium sensitivity is an important process during hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction.
Cholinesterases hydrolyze acetylcholine and thus they play a key role in a process of cholinergic neurotransmission. Changes in their activities are linked to many diseases (e.g Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, lipid disorders). Thus, it is important to determine their activity in a fast, simply and precise way. In this review, different approaches of studying cholinesterase activities (e.g pH-dependent, spectrophotometric, radiometric, histochemical methods or biosensors) are discussed. Comparisons, advantages or disadvantages of selected methods (e.g most widely used Ellman's assay, extremely sensitive Johnson Russell method or modern technique with golden nanoparticles) are presented. This review enables one to choose a suitable method for determination of cholinesterase activities with respect to laboratory equipment, type of analysis, pH, temperature scale or special conditions.
