Results and discussion: The laboratory efficacy score correlated with clinical parasite clearance (r(s)=0.7). The ethnobotanical component correlated weakly with clinical symptom clearance but not with parasite clearance. The safety

component selleck chemical was difficult to validate as all plants entering clinical trials were generally considered safe, so there was no clinical data on toxic plants.

Conclusion: The RITAM score (especially the efficacy and safety components) can be used as part of the selection process for prioritising plants for further research as anti-malarial drug candidates. The validation in this study was limited by the very small number of available clinical studies, and the heterogeneity of patients included.”
“Oxidative stress is one of the major causative factors for injury to plants exposed to environmental stresses. Plants have developed diverse defense Screening Library mechanisms for scavenging oxidative stress-inducing molecules. The antioxidative enzyme 2-cysteine peroxiredoxin (2-Cys Prx) removes peroxides and protects the photosynthetic membrane from oxidative damage. In this study, transgenic potato (Solanum tuberosum L. cv. Atlantic) expressing At2-Cys Prx under control of the oxidative stress-inducible SWPA2 promoter or enhanced CaMV

35S promoter (referred to as SP and EP plants, respectively) was generated using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. The transgenic plants were tested for tolerance to stress. Following treatment with

3 mu M methyl viologen (MV), leaf discs from SP and EP plants showed approximately 33 and 15% less damage than non-transformed (NT) plants. When 300 mu M MV was sprayed onto whole plants, the photosynthetic activity of SP plants decreased by 25%, whereas that of NT plants decreased by 60%. In addition, SP plants showed enhanced tolerance to high temperature at 42 degrees C. After treatment at high temperature, the photosynthetic activity of SP plants decreased by about 7% compared to plants grown at 25 degrees C, whereas it declined by 31% in NT plants. These results indicate that CX-6258 in vitro transgenic potato can efficiently regulate oxidative stress from various environmental stresses via overexpression of Ar2-Cys Prx under control of the stress-inducible SWPA2 promoter. (C) 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.”
“Increasing evidences support the participation of adipokines in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia (PE). Visfatin is a novel adipokine secreted by fat tissue and macrophages and is involved in the regulation of glucose homeostasis. Our aim is to investigate visfatin levels in women with PE, women with the third trimester of normal pregnancy and healthy non-pregnant women.

We included 32 preeclamptic patients who received antenatal and obstetric care at Perinatology Clinic. A total of 32 pregnant women with normal ongoing pregnancies and 32 non-pregnant women were taken as the control groups. Plasma levels of visfatin were quantified by ELISA.