Smoking during pregnancy presents health risks for both the mother and her child. In this study we followed changes in the production of steroid hormones in pregnant smokers. We focused on changes in steroidogenesis in the blood of mothers in their 37th week of pregnancy and in mixed cord blood from their newborns. The study included 88 healthy women with physiological pregnancies (17 active smokers and 71 nonsmokers). We separately analyzed hormonal changes associated with smoking according to the sex of newborns. In women with male fetuses, we found higher levels of serum cortisone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), 7α-OH-DHEA, 17-OH pregnenolone, testosterone, and androstenedione in smokers at the 37th week compared to non-smokers. In women with female fetuses, we found lower serum levels of 7β-OH-DHEA and higher androstenedione in smokers at the 37th week. We found significantly higher levels of testosterone in newborn males of smokers and higher levels of 7α-OH-DHEA in female newborns of smokers. Smoking during pregnancy induces changes in the production of steroids in both the mother and her child. These changes are different for different fetal sexes, with more pronounced changes in mothers carrying male newborns as well as in the newborn males themselves., K. Adamcová, L. Kolátorová, T. Chlupáčová, M. Šimková, H. Jandíková, A. Pařízek, L. Stárka, M. Dušková., and Obsahuje bibliografii
The plexiform lesion is the hallmark of plexogenic pulmonary arteriopathy, which accompanies severe primary pulmonary hypertension. Over the years, a wide variety of hypotheses have been offered to explain the pathogenesis of these glomoid structures. Most recently, the new techniques and concepts of molecular biology have been applied to the study of the plexiform lesion and have indicated that they are composed of phenotypically abnormal endothelial cells with different pathogenic origins in primary and secondary pulmonary hypertension. The new approaches and concepts have suggested new vistas for exploration., A. P. Fishman., and Obsahuje bibliografii
For a graphical property P and a graph G, a subset S of vertices of G is a P-set if the subgraph induced by S has the property P. The domination number with respect to the property P, denoted by γP (G), is the minimum cardinality of a dominating P-set. We define the domination multisubdivision number with respect to P, denoted by msdP (G), as a minimum positive integer k such that there exists an edge which must be subdivided k times to change γP (G). In this paper (a) we present necessary and sufficient conditions for a change of γP (G) after subdividing an edge of G once, (b) we prove that if e is an edge of a graph G then γP (Ge,1) < γP (G) if and only if γP (G − e) < γP (G) (Ge,t denotes the graph obtained from G by subdivision of e with t vertices), (c) we also prove that for every edge of a graph G we have γP (G − e) 6 γP (Ge,3) ≤ γP (G − e) + 1, and (d) we show that msdP (G) 6 3, where P is hereditary and closed under union with K1.