Structure-activity relationships of the N-terminus of calcitonin gene-related peptide: key roles of alanine-5 and threonine-6 in receptor activation.
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Flow injection spectrophotometric analysis of human salivary alpha-amylase activity using an enzyme degradation of starch-iodine complexes in flow channel and its application to human stress testing.
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Flow injection spectrophotometric analysis (FIA) of human salivary alpha-amylase was developed using an enzyme degradation reaction of starch-iodine complexes. In this proposed method, the salivary alpha-amylase, known as a human stress indicator, is directly and rapidly determined without any pretreatment. In this study, the optimum starch-iodine complexes (i.e., optimum molecular weight and amylase-amylopectin compounding ratio) were selected, and their rapid degradation in the flow channel was investigated to determine salivary amylase in the FIA system. The determination range of alpha-amylase was obtained from 0.25 to 5.0 kilo Novo unit per milliliter (KNU/mL), and these concentrations were equivalent to the real concentration of amylase in human saliva. The quantitative values obtained by this method were found to be highly reproducible with 1.6% (n=25) of the relative standard deviation for 1.0 KNU/mL. The detection limit (3sigma) was 60 NU/mL. In addition, the method requires small volume of a sample (20 microL), and 30 samples was sequentially measured within one hour. Real human saliva collected before and after exercise was utilized to demonstrate the feasibility of human stress test and analytical performance of this approach. (+info)
Association between salivary alpha-amylase activity and pain relief scale scores in cancer patients with bone metastases treated with radiotherapy.
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BACKGROUND: Subjective assessment tools such as visual analog scales (VAS) or pain scores are commonly used to evaluate the intensity of chronic cancer-induced pain. However, their value is limited in some cases. We measured changes in VAS pain scores and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) concentrations in cancer patients receiving radiotherapy for bone metastases to ascertain the correlation between these measures. METHODS: We enrolled 30 patients with bone metastases attending a single institution from June 2010 to March 2011. All patients with cancer-induced bone pain received radiation therapy (RT) at the same dose (30 Gy) and fractionation (3 Gy/fraction, 5 days/week) for palliative pain relief. We assessed heart rate (HR), systolic and diastolic blood pressures (DBP/SBP) and VAS pain scores before (d0) and after five (d5) and ten fractions (d10) of irradiation. sAA and salivary cortisol (SC) concentrations were measured using a portable analyzer and automated chemiluminescence analyzer, respectively. RESULTS: Radiotherapy markedly decreased VAS scores from (82.93 +/- 9.29) to (31.43 +/- 16.73) mm (P < 0.001) and sAA concentrations from (109.40 +/- 26.38) to (36.03 +/- 19.40) U/ml (P <0.001). Moreover, there was a significant correlation between these two indices (P <0.01, r = 0.541). HR decreased by 6.5% after radiotherapy, but did not correlate with VAS scores (P >0.05). SC concentrations and BP did not change significantly during the study (P >0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The significant correlation between sAA concentrations and VAS pain scores identified in these preliminary results suggests that this biomarker may be a valuable, noninvasive and sensitive index for the objective assessment of pain intensity in patients with cancer-induced bone pain. (+info)