PubMed Journal Database | Acta physiologica (Oxford, England) 
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Showing PubMed Articles 1–25 of 68 from Acta physiologica (Oxford, England)
Beauty, we may assume, has fascinated mankind from its earliest beginnings. As the Oxford Dictionary tells us, beauty is "a combination of qualities […] that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight" (Oxford Dictionary, 2013). The Italian novelist-philosopher Umberto Eco explained the "History of Beauty" (Eco 2004) throughout the ages to a wider audience. Although highly debated in professional circles, he did bring the concept from art history to the lay public. Not only does Eco follow descrip...
Dynamic changes in the contractile apparatus during exercise.
The study by Hvid et al. (2013) brings together two themes in muscle research; needle biopsy of human muscle and attempts to understand the mechanism of fatigue. Muscle biopsy has been in use since at least the time of Duchenne (1868) but the modern approach was pioneered by Bergström (1962). It allows a small muscle biopsy to be removed from a muscle using a large bore needle. Because the method is essentially painless (local anaesthetic being used for the skin incision) and muscle damage is negligible,...
The article published recently by Max Bennett in your journal is a misleading account of a well documented history of the discovery of non-adrenergic, non-cholinergic nerves and of purinergic signalling (see Burnstock 2006, 2007, 2012a, 2012b). One review was published in Acta Physiologica together with Bertil Fredholm, Alan North and Alex Verkhratsky (Burnstock et al. 2010). The first paper to describe non-adrenergic, non-cholinergic neurotransmission to the guinea-pig taenia coli was a team effort under m...
AIM: Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) ergic transmission from the hypothalamus is essential for normal feeding regulation, and hyperphagia can be induced by local application of GABAA -receptor agonists to different feeding-associated brain areas. The food intake in rats varies diurnally and that may influence the effect of GABAA -receptor active compounds. The progesterone metabolite allopregnanolone is a highly potent endogenous positive modulator of the GABAA -receptor. Therefore, it is easy to envisage th...
Effect of acute environmental hypoxia on protein metabolism in human skeletal muscle.
Hypoxia-induced muscle wasting has been observed in several environmental and pathological conditions. However, the molecular mechanisms behind this loss of muscle mass are far from being completely elucidated, certainly in vivo. When studying the regulation of muscle mass by environmental hypoxia, many confounding factors have to be taken into account, such as decreased protein ingestion, sleep deprivation or reduced physical activity, which make difficult to know whether hypoxia per se causes a reduction...
Acta Physiologica enhances performance in 2012.
AIM: Early life reduction in nephron number and chronic high salt intake cause development of renal and cardiovascular disease, which has been associated with oxidative stress and nitric oxide (NO) deficiency. We investigated the hypothesis that interventions stimulating NO signalling or reducing oxidative stress, may restore renal autoregulation, attenuate hypertension, and reduce renal and cardiovascular injuries following reduction in renal mass reduction and chronic high salt intake. METHODS: Male Sprag...
Compartmentation of cAMP Signalling in Cardiomyocytes in Health and Disease.
cAMP is an ubiquitous second messenger critically involved in the regulation of heart function. It has been shown to act in discrete subcellular signalling compartments formed by differentially localized receptors, phosphodiesterases and protein kinases. Cardiac diseases such as hypertrophy or heart failure are associated with structural and functional remodelling of these microdomains which leads to changes in cAMP compartmentation. In this review, we will discuss recent key findings which provided new ins...
A role for ROS in the regulation of skeletal muscle hypertrophy.
It is clear that at pathologically high chronic levels reactive oxygen species (ROS) are cytotoxic. However, it is also now clear that during contraction ROS are produced at low (physiological) levels and play an important role in cell signalling in normal healthy skeletal muscle (reviewed in (Powers and Jackson, 2008)). To date, much of the work regarding skeletal muscle ROS produced during contraction has focussed on endurance exercise. This has led to considerable controversy in the literature regarding...
Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin: pathophysiology and clinical applications.
Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), a 25 kDa protein produced by injured nephron epithelia, is one of the most promising new markers of renal epithelial injury. In contrast to serum creatinine and urinary output, which are the measures of kidney function, NGAL is specifically induced in the damaged nephron and then released into blood and urine, where it can be readily measured. Careful proof-of-concept studies using defined animal models have uncovered the sources and trafficking of NGAL in...
Aim: Using mice deficient in the Ca(V) 3.1 T-type Ca(2+) channel, the aim of the present study was to elucidate the molecular identity of non-L-type channels involved in vascular tone regulation in mesenteric arteries and arterioles. Methods: We used immunofluorescence microscopy to localize Ca(V) 3.1 channels, patch clamp electrophysiology to test effects of a putative T-type channel blocker NNC 55-0396 on whole cell Ca(2+) currents, pressure myography and Ca(2+) imaging to test diameter and Ca(2+) respon...
AIM: The remodeling of transmural dispersion of repolarization (TDR) in human heart failure (HF) and in different animal models of cardiac hypertrophy or HF remains a controversial topic. We hypothesize that TDR may exhibit temporal alterations, depending on the stage of the disease. METHODS: We systematically investigated the temporal alterations of TDR during the development of cardiac hypertrophy and HF in the mouse pressure-overload model using electrophysiological and molecular biology techniques. RESU...
The developmental transition of ovine adipose tissue through early life.
AIM: Hypothermia induced by cold exposure at birth is prevented in sheep by the rapid onset of non-shivering thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue (BAT). Changes in adipose tissue composition in early life are therefore essential for survival but also influence adiposity in later life and were thus examined in detail during early development. METHODS: Changes in adipose composition were investigated by immunohistochemistry and qRT-PCR between the period from the first appearance of adipose in the mid gestat...
AIM: Lamotrigine is a neuroprotective agent that is used clinically for the treatment of seizures and neuropathic pain. A significant volume of literature has reported that lamotrigine exerts analgesic effect by blocking Ca(2+) channels. However, little is known regarding the effect of lamotrigine on the intracellular Ca(2+) concentration ([Ca(2+) ](i) ). The aim of this study was to determine whether lamotrigine modulates [Ca(2+) ](i) in sensory neurones. METHODS: Lamotrigine-induced changes in [Ca(2+) ](i...
AIM: This study investigates whether a local renin-angiotensin system (RAS) exists in mouse colon and whether angiotensin II (Ang II) may play a role in the regulation of the contractile activity. METHODS: Isometric recordings were performed in vitro on the longitudinal muscle of mouse proximal and distal colon. Transcripts encoding for RAS components were investigated by RT-PCR. RESULTS: Ang II caused, in both preparations, a concentration-dependent contractile effect, antagonized by losartan, AT(1) recept...
Central Role Of Mitochondrial Injury In The Pathogenesis Of Acute Pancreatitis.
Acute pancreatitis is an inflammatory disease with no specific treatment. One of the main reasons behind the lack of specific therapy is that the pathogenesis of acute pancreatitis is poorly understood. During the development of acute pancreatitis, the disease-inducing factors can damage both cell types of the exocrine pancreas, namely the acinar and ductal cells. Since damage of either of the cell types can contribute to the inflammation, it is crucial to find common intracellular mechanisms which can be t...
Clopidogrel and Ticagrelor, antagonists to P2Y(12) receptor molecules on platelet membranes, significantly ameliorate acute myocardial infarction due to coronary artery thrombosis, the most common cause of death in the developed world. A personal account is given here of the foundational research that lead to the identification of P2Y receptors, carried out 50 years ago in the Melbourne University Zoology Department headed by Geoffrey Burnstock. In Christmas 1962 I made the serendipitous observation of larg...
Heat stress activates the Akt/mTOR signaling pathway in rat skeletal muscle.
AIM: It is well known that various stimuli, such as mechanical stress and nutrients, induce muscle hypertrophy thorough the Akt/mTOR signaling pathway, which is a key mediator of protein synthesis and hypertrophy in skeletal muscle. It was recently reported that heat stress also induces an increase in muscle weight and muscle protein content. In addition, heat stress enhances Akt/mTOR signaling after one bout of resistance exercise. However, it remains unclear whether increased temperature itself stimulates...
Renal pericytes: regulators of medullary blood flow.
Regulation of medullary blood flow (MBF) is essential in maintaining normal kidney function. Blood flow to the medulla is supplied by the descending vasa recta (DVR), which arise from the efferent arterioles of juxtamedullary glomeruli. DVR are composed of a continuous endothelium, intercalated with smooth muscle-like cells called pericytes. Pericytes have been shown to alter the diameter of isolated and in situ DVR in response to vasoactive stimuli that are transmitted via a network of autocrine and paracr...
Transient receptor potential channels in bladder function.
The transient receptor potential (TRP) superfamily of cationic ion channels includes proteins involved in the transduction of several physical and chemical stimuli to finely tune physiological functions. In the urinary bladder, they are highly expressed in, but not restricted to, primary afferent neurons. The urothelium and some interstitial cells also express several TRP channels. In this review, we describe the expression and the known roles of some members of TRP subfamilies, namely TRPV, TRPM and TRPA,...
Post-cardiac arrest syndrome: Second thoughts regarding therapeutic hypothermia.
To the Editor: We have read with great interest the excellent article by Wold et al. which has been published in the latest issue of Acta Physiologica (Wold et al. 2012). The authors concluded that the cardiac contractile dysfunction after rewarming is explained not only by the aggravation of calcium overload during deep hypothermia (15 °C), but, also, by the decreased recovery of calcium homeostasis during rewarming. Although there is evidence that calcium ion concentration increases considerably after de...
Pleural Function And Lymphatics.
The pleural space plays an important role in respiratory function as the negative intrapleural pressure regime ensures lung expansion and in the mean time maintains the tight mechanical coupling between the lung and the chest wall. The efficiency of the lung-chest wall coupling depend upon pleural liquid volume, which in turn reflects the balance between the filtration of fluid into and its egress out of the cavity. While filtration occurs though a single mechanisms passively driving fluid from the intersti...
AIM: To compare the therapeutic effect of α(2) and α(4) integrin-blocking antibodies to conventional inflammatory bowel disease drugs methotrexate, 5-aminosalicylic acid and azathioprine in the dextran sulfate sodium mouse colitis model. METHODS: Colitis was induced in balb/c mice with 2.5-3.0% dextran sulfate sodium. Treatment was given daily for seven days after the onset of colitis, by rectal installation. Clinical signs of disease were assessed daily using a disease activity index. After 19 days all a...
AIM: Cardiac contraction and relaxation are mediated by rapidly changing calcium concentration around the myofibrils. In comparison with endotherms, ectothermic hearts are more strongly dependent on extracellular calcium for contraction suggesting this trait might represent the primitive vertebrate mode of cardiac activation. This study tests the hypothesis that intracellular calcium stores play a minor role in cardiac excitation-contraction coupling of a basal vertebrate, the lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis)...
AIM: To investigate the effects of dietary creatine supplementation alone and in combination with exercise on basal cardiac function, susceptibility to ischemia/reperfusion injury and mitochondrial oxidative function. METHODS: Male Wistar rats were swim-trained for 8 weeks, 5 days/week. Hearts were excised and either freeze-clamped for biochemical analysis or perfused on the isolated heart perfusion system to assess function and ischemia/reperfusion tolerance. Mechanical function was documented in working h...
