In the case of coral reefs, 2 groups of islands, which are the ha

In the case of coral reefs, 2 groups of islands, which are the habitats of several endemic species, can be used as an alternative index. For deep-sea ecosystems, complementary analysis of species composition can be used to select sites with unique combinations of vent and seep communities [34]. For offshore pelagic ecosystems, the uniqueness and rarity in the ocean physical/current system must be evaluated because of the limited information about this criterion with respect to pelagic plankton species. The most useful information for the quantification of criterion

1 is an endemic species list. However, accumulated information on the distribution of endemic species is insufficient in Japanese waters, especially for offshore pelagic and deep-sea areas. To overcome this bias, it is important to clarify the relationships between research efforts and the VE-821 distribution of endemic species. In addition, biased distribution of endemic species may occur as a result of the duration, speed, or location of evolution. Additional research is required on these topics. Typical scale mismatch can occur when using different sources of information on endemic species. For example, a globally defined endemic species may occur at many sites within a certain region.

If the study area is limited to this region, the species cannot be used as an indicator of this criterion. In contrast, some globally common selleck inhibitor species may

be rare in some regions. In such cases, the distribution of species in the focal area can be used as an index for this criterion if the research area in confined to the specific region. This criterion is defined as, “areas that are required for a population to survive and thrive,” [5]. This criterion is intended to identify the areas required for the survival, reproduction, and critical life-history stages of individual species, such as breeding sites, Rho nesting grounds, spawning areas, and way stations of mobile species. Alternatively, this criterion can be evaluated by considering the metapopulation structures of major marine species. Source populations revealed by molecular genetics analyses should be ranked higher than sink populations for this criterion. Furthermore, recent developments in the bio-tracking of animals can be used to evaluate this criterion by indicating which specific locations within the area are important for the total life history of the target species [35]. This study investigated whether there is information regarding the use of certain habitats by key mobile fauna as well as the genetic connectivity of fundamental species. For the kelp community in Hokkaido, fishery catch data on 7 key species by the local government can be used as an alternative index of this criterion.

0%; placebo, 22 0%; P = 002; relative risk, 2 3; 95% CI, 1 3–4 2

0%; placebo, 22.0%; P = .002; relative risk, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.3–4.2). Prespecified exploratory subgroup analysis results by concomitant corticosteroid or immunosuppressive use for clinical remission at weeks 6 and 10 and CDAI-100 response at week 6 for the TNF antagonist–failure and overall populations are shown in Supplementary Figures 2 and 3. Among patients

in the TNF antagonist–failure and overall populations with increased baseline CRP levels, median changes in CRP concentration were improved modestly from baseline to weeks 6 and 10; these improvements were more pronounced at week 10 than at week 6 (Supplementary Figure 4). Nominal P values for between-group differences in median change in fecal calprotectin Dabrafenib datasheet levels from baseline to week 6

were not less than .05 among the TNF antagonist–failure population (vedolizumab, -22.1 μg/g stool; placebo, -5.0 μg/g stool; P = .883) or the overall population (vedolizumab, -26.2 μg/g stool; placebo, -7.8 μg/g stool; P = .744). Sixty percent of placebo-treated patients and 56% of vedolizumab-treated patients experienced 1 or more AEs during the study (Table 2). selleck chemical Serious infection and drug-related SAEs were experienced by 1% or less of patients in both groups, and 2% of patients in both groups had SAEs leading to study discontinuation. No deaths were reported in the study. The most common AEs in both groups were similar and included infections (vedolizumab, 19%; placebo, 17%). Gastrointestinal infections occurred in 5 (2%) vedolizumab-treated patients and in 3 (1%) placebo-treated patients. In vedolizumab-treated patients, the most common AEs Chloroambucil were nausea, vomiting, headache, upper respiratory tract infection, arthralgia, nasopharyngitis, and abdominal pain (Table 2). Incidences of nausea, upper respiratory tract infection, arthralgia, abdominal pain, aphthous stomatitis, vomiting, fatigue, urinary tract infection, and anemia were higher with vedolizumab, whereas incidences of CD exacerbation, pyrexia, and headache were higher with placebo. Two vedolizumab-treated patients had SAEs of infection, including

1 anal abscess and 1 urinary tract infection, which were treated successfully during the study; neither led to study discontinuation. No placebo-treated patients had SAEs of infection. Infusion-related AEs occurred in 4 (2%) vedolizumab-treated patients and in 2 (<1%) placebo-treated patients. In the 1 patient who reported new neurologic symptoms during the study and was evaluated by an independent adjudication committee, PML formally was excluded. This vedolizumab-treated patient was later withdrawn from the study because of an ependymoma and had the only reported neoplasm in the study. The mean ± SD week 6 trough vedolizumab serum concentration was 26.5 ± 15.8 μg/mL (n = 195), which was similar to that observed in GEMINI 2.24 The week 10 vedolizumab serum concentration was 28.4 ± 17.9 μg/mL (n = 190).

, 2008), and Cd was also shown to cause cell death in a large num

, 2008), and Cd was also shown to cause cell death in a large number of different cell types (Templeton and Liu, 2010). Cell death induction by Cd was ascribed to the causation of ER-stress

(Wang et al., 2009), mitochondrial depolarization (Messner et al., 2009), increase in ceramides and calpain-activation (Lee and Thevenod, 2008), ROS-production (Yang et al., 2007), and DNA-damage (Liu and Jan, 2000). Intriguingly, the reported final outcome of Cd-induced cell death is highly diverse, ranging from classical apoptosis (Jung et al., www.selleckchem.com/products/Bafilomycin-A1.html 2008) and necrosis (Kaji et al., 1992 and Kishimoto et al., 1991) to programmed necrosis (Messner et al., 2009) and autophagy (Dong et al., 2009). This study was conducted to precisely define the final outcome of Cd-induced cell death in endothelial cells, and to study the cellular processes involved therein with a “bottom up” research strategy. Many previous studies on cadmium-induced cell death focussed primarily on upstream signalling analyses, lacking a hard fact characterization of the ultimate outcome. As the endpoint of cell death defines whether an agent (Cd) causes inflammation (necrosis) or not (apoptosis), the clear definition of the mode of cell death is crucial CYC202 research buy for the pathophysiological understanding of Cd-caused diseases. All reagents used were of purissimum or analytical grade quality and were purchased from

Sigma–Aldrich (Sigma–Aldrich, Vienna, Austria) unless specified otherwise. The isolation and culture of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) has been described previously (Bernhard et al., 2003). The isolation and analysis of HUVECs were approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical University of Innsbruck (No.: UN2979) and the Ethics Committee of the Medical University of Vienna (EK Nr. 1183/2012). Cells were routinely passaged in 0.2% gelatine-coated (Sigma, Steinheim, Germany) polysterene culture flasks (TPP, Switzerland) in endothelial growth medium (EGM, Lonza) in a humidified Ribose-5-phosphate isomerase atmosphere containing 5% CO2. For cell death analyses, 3 × 105 HUVECs per well were

seeded onto gelatine-coated 6-well plates (TPP, Switzerland). Prior to each experiment, medium was replaced by fresh medium. BCL-XL viruses: For constitutive over-expression of human BCL-XL in HUVECs, BCL-XL encoding cDNA was PCR amplified and recombined into pDONR-207 (Invitrogen) using Invitrogen’s B/P recombination kit. A sequence verified clone was used for L/R recombination with pHR-SFFV-dest-IRES-Puro thereby generating the lentiviral expression plasmid pHR-SFFV-BCLXL-IRES-Puro (Sigl et al., 2009). For lentiviral transduction, human HEK 293T cells were transiently transfected with lentiviral plasmids containing cDNAs coding for human BCL-XL or eGFP, along with the packaging plasmids pCMV 8.91 and pVSV-G (kindly provided by Didier Trono). Forty eight and 72 h after transfection lentiviral supernatant was sterile filtered (0.

Blood glucose and body weight data were analyzed using repeated m

Blood glucose and body weight data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), and differences between the groups were assessed using the Bonferroni post-hoc test. Data obtained from motor skills tests, as well as optical densitometry of TH-ir were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Bonferroni post-hoc test. Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. Data were

run on Statistica 6.0 software package (StatSoft, Inc., USA). All data are represented by the mean ± standard error of mean (SEM). We thank Antônio Generoso Severino for his technical assistance. This study was supported by grants from CNPq and CAPES. P.S. do Nascimento was supported by a Ph.D. scholarship from CNPq, M. Achaval and B.D. Schaan are CNPq investigators. We are in debt Protein Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor with Roche, who donated us the test strips.


“The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a set of neocortical areas involved in a variety of cognitive functions that are instrumental in working memory (WM) processing (Baddeley, 1992, D’Esposito et al., 2000 and de Saint Blanquat et al., 2010). Damage to the PFC NVP-BKM120 concentration of rodents, nonhuman primates, and humans produces profound deficits in performance on WM tasks (Passingham, 1985, Funahashi et al., 1993, Miller, 2000 and Tsuchida and Bumetanide Fellows, 2009). Working memory has been described as a multi-component system (Baddeley, 2003 and Repovs and Baddeley, 2006) or a collection of distinct cognitive processes (Floresco and Phillips, 2001, Bunting and Cowan, 2005 and Cowan, 2008) that provides active maintenance of trial-unique information in temporary

storage. In both laboratory tasks and in normal cognition, WM enables manipulation, processing, and retrieval of memories, which are converted efficiently into long-term memory after both short (seconds) and long (minutes to hours) delays (Fuster, 1997, Floresco and Phillips, 2001, Phillips et al., 2004, Funahashi, 2006 and Rios Valentim et al., 2009). During the delay period of WM tasks, brain imaging studies in humans using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have shown increased blood flow within the PFC (Jonides et al., 1993, Petrides et al., 1993 and Badre and D’Esposito, 2007). Consistent with the increased perfusion, imaging studies have also shown higher activity of the PFC during the delay period of WM tasks (Wagner et al., 2001, Rypma, 2006 and Motes and Rypma, 2010).

Conditioned medium from macrophages, osteoclasts and treated oste

Conditioned medium from macrophages, osteoclasts and treated osteoclasts all selleck inhibitor significantly increased CD69 expression on γδ T cells to a similar extent (Fig. 3). This was in contrast to our findings with CD4+ T cells, since conditioned medium from macrophages or untreated osteoclasts consistently failed to induce upregulation of CD69 on CD4+ T cells. However, conditioned medium from treated osteoclasts did induce a significant increase in CD69 expression on CD4+ T cells. Taken

together, these results indicate that γδ T cell activation by macrophages or osteoclasts is mediated by soluble factors and does not fundamentally require cell–cell contact. However, the stimulatory effect of osteoclasts on CD4+ T cells requires co-culture conditions, suggesting that cell–cell interactions play an important role in this process. TNFα is a potent stimulator of T cell activation and is capable of co-stimulatory effects on T cell survival [23] and [24]. We therefore investigated whether macrophages and osteoclasts were triggering γδ T cell activation Proteasome inhibitor via production of TNFα. Using a neutralising anti-TNFα antibody we observed that the stimulatory effect of macrophage- and osteoclast-derived

conditioned medium on CD69 expression by γδ T cells was significantly reduced versus the isotype control (Fig. 4). There was also a trend for TNFα neutralisation to diminish the stimulatory effects of treated

osteoclast-derived conditioned medium but this was not statistically significant versus the isotype control. While the stimulatory effect of conditioned medium on γδ T cell activation was attenuated by anti-TNFα treatment, also it was not abolished entirely, indicating that other stimulatory factors are present in osteoclast-derived conditioned medium that trigger γδ T cell activation. Following our observation that osteoclasts induce γδ T cell activation we then sought to determine whether these stimulatory effects of osteoclasts could trigger proliferative responses in γδ T cells. Using CFSE-labelled γδ and CD4+ T cells in co-cultures with autologous osteoclasts, we observed no proliferative effects of autologous osteoclasts on unstimulated γδ T cells or CD4+ T cells (Fig. 5A). However, activation of γδ T cells with IL-2 (which induced marked upregulation of CD69 on γδ T cells — Fig. 3A) resulted in extensive proliferation of γδ T cells, and this proliferative effect was further enhanced by co-culture with osteoclasts (Fig. 5A). In contrast to this, CD4+ T cells did not exhibit any proliferative responses to IL-2 alone or in co-culture with osteoclasts. This suggests that unstimulated osteoclasts provide co-stimulatory signals that augment IL-2-induced γδ T cell proliferation, but such co-stimulatory signals do not confer responsiveness of CD4+ T cells to IL-2 stimulation.

And I don’t – I don’t believe in that at all, you know That’s th

And I don’t – I don’t believe in that at all, you know. That’s the reason I made out a – me and my wife both had a living will made

up and she knows what I want, and I know what she wants” (White Ixazomib solubility dmso participant #3-1). This belief in a written living will was also echoed in a Hispanic group “Put it in writing” (#H1-1), “It has to be written down” (#H1-2), and “You have to write it down as back-up. You know, you tell them all you want to, but you know at that last minute, because my daughter’s close to me. I don’t think she’d ever want to let me go, see” (#H1-3). An African American participant (#A2-1) stated: “It has a way of separating the love that you thought you had and, whether it be greedy or just some of ‘em trying to take control, it gets hum-drum. Things aren’t really what you want unless it’s legally done with

a will or you have a set power of attorney that has your wishes recorded and written down.” selleck chemicals Another patient explained that a written document was necessary because surrogates might become incapacitated as well: “anything can happen like, uh, wife’s supposed to be taking care of me, but something could happen to her.” …“That’s why we have it written down and designates her as primary – my two kids secondary. So — somebody there within the family will know what’s going on and all the instructions be written down. And not open to interpretation. Vitamin B12 Verbal communication’s open to a lot of different interpretations” (#W3-2). A few white patients felt that someone other than family might do a better job in carrying out a patient’s wishes and thus had designated medical power of attorneys: “Well, I think that, naming a friend as the executor of whatever you want to call this, your living will or whatever, it creates less friction from certain family members” (#W2-2).

Other participants wanted to avoid burdening others with decision-making and strove to prevent family discord (“Altruist”). Altruists stated: “And if the time comes when that’s it, just read it off and take care of it. It shouldn’t be her burden or mine on her case (#W2-3), “I don’t want to put no burden on nobody else” (#H1-4), and “I think it’s very important – I don’t want to have my kids or whatever under that pressure” (#A1-2) and: “it would take the pressure off the children and the rest of your family because some of them would be at odds, some of them would want to pull the plug on you and some of them wouldn’t. […] They wouldn’t have to go through that if they already know what you want. […]I feel it’s important for my children to know and not have to, as he said, be under the pressure to make it.” (#A1-2).

Apparently, at a rowdy meeting on the 15 July 2011, ‘Pagham resid

Apparently, at a rowdy meeting on the 15 July 2011, ‘Pagham residents and business owners packed out the village hall to protest that this snail would prevent them from strengthening sea defences and jeopardize tourism’ – though who goes there find more as a tourist is a mystery to me. Actually, the adjoining Pagham Harbour is already a local nature reserve managed by the Sussex Wildlife Trust and does attract some tourists. But this is not what the villagers are moaning about. The problem lies in history. After the Second World War, planning restrictions, especially local ones,

were minimal and certain people thought it would be a jolly good idea to build summer homes on the bank of shingle, seaward of the original Pagham, which protected the village from the sea. Over time these have become permanent ‘homes’. As discussed in an earlier editorial (Morton,

2007), local coastal erosion and changing patterns of inshore sea currents are causing problems with Pagham’s protective shingle bank and, as a result, it and the houses atop it have to be repeatedly strengthened and safeguarded, respectively, at no small cost to the public purse. This strengthening means destruction of Defolin’s lagoon snail habitat (if it has not happened already); more importantly, the Government has said that it literally cannot keep on reinforcing, at huge cost, an area of naturally

eroding coastline that is doomed to be drowned VEGFR inhibitor by the sea one day anyway. In addition to DeFolin’s lagoon snail, there are many other protected lagoon species, all tiny. Other British species, which are virtually exclusive to saline lagoons as at Pagham, are four species of stoneworts, namely, the Baltic (Chara baltica), bearded (C. canescens), foxtail (Lamprothamnium papulosum) and bird’s nest (Tolypella nidifica). In addition, there are 10 species of lagoonal animal protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Carnitine dehydrogenase Act, that is, the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis), Ivell’s sea anemone (Edwardsia ivelli) (thought to be already globally extinct), the trembling sea mat (Victorella pavida), the lagoon sandworm (Armandia cirrhosa), the tentacled lagoon worm (Alkmaria romijni), a hydroid (Clavopsella navis), the lagoon snail (Paludinella littorina), the lagoon sand shrimp (Gammarus insensibilis), the lagoon seaslug (Tenellia adspersa) and the Bembridge water beetle (Paracymus aeneus). If DeFolin’s lagoon snail is allowed to depart this Earth, then the above species would not be far behind it for the very simple reason that in crowded Great Britain, and especially England, coastal lagoons have virtually all but disappeared already and, as the snail demonstrates, the survivors are not far behind.

001 n = 14–15) Age and LPS both had a significant effect on ove

001. n = 14–15). Age and LPS both had a significant effect on overnight burrowing (Age: F1,50 = 13.34, p < 0.001. LPS: F1,50 = 28.21, p < 0.0001). In addition, an interaction between the two factors was detectable (F1,50 = 5.053, p = 0.029). To conclude, a systemic challenge of LPS led to an exacerbated and decrease in burrowing activity in 21 month old mice when compared to 4 month old mice. Next, we investigated a cerebellum dependent behaviour, the multiple static Belnacasan molecular weight rod test, which assesses the co-ordination and balance of mice on different diameter static rods (Carter et al., 1999 and Contet et al., 2001). Mice were placed on a suspended 9 mm diameter

static rod and the transit time to reach a platform after orientation was assessed in saline and LPS-treated mice (Fig. 5C and D). Chi squared analysis of baseline static rod performance showed a significant difference between young (7%, n = 30) and aged (68%, n = 25) mice in pass/fail ATM/ATR inhibition ratios on the 9 mm static rod (х2 = 22.69, d.f. = 1, p < 0.0001) ( Fig. 5C). Analysis of baseline transit times also showed a significant difference between young and aged mice (Mann Whitney test, p < 0.0001, n = 25–30 per group) ( Fig. 5D). Injection of LPS or saline did not have a significant effect on pass/fail rates at any age and there were not sufficient successful completions of the test in

the 21 month old mice to test for differences in transit times after injection. We also tested muscle strength using the climbing rod test to investigate

whether changes in muscle strength correlated with poorer static rod performance. There was a decline in climbing rod performance with age (p < 0.0001, Mann Whitney test; supplementary data Fig. 2A), but we found no difference in climbing rod performance between 21 month old mice that passed or failed the static rod test (supplementary data Fig. 2B). There was also no correlation between climbing rod test performance and static rod Methane monooxygenase transit time in 4 month old mice ( Supplementary data Fig. 2C). Finally we investigated the effect of LPS injection on the expression of inflammatory mediators in the different CNS regions of aged and young mice using quantitative real time PCR. However, we could not detect any significant increase of IL-6, IL-1β or iNOS mRNA expression 24 h after LPS injection in young or aged cerebellum or hippocampus (data not shown). In this study we have investigated the phenotype and morphological changes of microglia in eight distinct regions of the young and aged mouse brain. We show that age-related phenotype changes of microglial cells are more pronounced in the white matter, with the cerebellum, the most caudal structure studied, showing the greatest differences. Variations in microglial density have been well described in adult mouse brain with the hippocampus and substantia nigra exhibiting the highest and the cerebellar cortex the lowest density of microglia (Lawson et al., 1990).

Numa série clínica com cerca de 153 crianças portadoras de DC e e

Numa série clínica com cerca de 153 crianças portadoras de DC e experimental usando ratinhos de laboratório com colite granulomatosa, verificou-se que a IL-6 está diretamente relacionada com as alterações do crescimento15. Em humanos, o polimorfismo 174 G/C altera a transcrição de IL-6 (com maior produção no tipo G/G). Em crianças com doença de Crohn, verificou-se uma correlação entre os portadores de polimorfismo G/G com atraso estatural em relação aos indivíduos com o genótipo G/C ou C/C. No mesmo estudo, o polimorfismo G/G associou-se à presença de níveis mais

elevados de marcadores pró-inflamatórios, por exemplo a proteína C reativa15. Da mesma forma, selleckchem ao administrar um bloqueador de IL-6 a ratinhos com colite granulomatosa verificou-se Pirfenidone chemical structure que a secreção hepática de IGF-1 e o

crescimento aumentaram, apesar de não se terem verificado alterações significativas na ingestão alimentar e portanto sem relação com a melhoria da malnutrição16. Estudos em humanos e animais de experiência mostram também ação de citoquinas na placa de crescimento: a exposição crónica à IL-6 afeta a atividade osteoblástica e promove a atividade osteoclástica, com consequente diminuição da espessura da placa de crescimento, uma ação que parece ser independente da atividade local do IGF-116 and 17. Outras citocinas podem afetar diretamente a placa de crescimento como sejam a interleucina-1beta (IL-1β) e o TNF-α, como o provam os trabalhos experimentais. Em ratinhos, a exposição à IL-1β e TNF-α impede o crescimento pela promoção da senescência dos condrócitos18. Outros efeitos deletérios sobre o crescimento não são mediados por citoquinas, mas por mecanismos pertencentes à imunidade inata, nomeadamente pela ação do lipopolissacarídeo (LPS), independentes da produção de citoquinas. A estimulação de toll-like receptors (TLR), especialmente o TLR4, modula a ação da HC quer por diminuir a expressão dos recetores a nível hepático, quer pela diminuição da transcrição

de IGF-1 ou pelo aumento do shedding dos IGF-BP 11. www.selleck.co.jp/products/sunitinib.html Independentemente da patologia em foco, para crescer é necessário que o balanço entre o aporte e o gasto de energia seja positivo. Na DC há um conjunto de fatores que impedem o crescimento, muitos deles dependentes da inflamação crónica e dos níveis de citocinas circulantes. O aporte deficitário é um fator muito importante. Os doentes de Crohn geralmente efetuam um aporte calórico que se estima em apenas 54% do que seria esperado para a idade19. Além da diminuição da ingestão alimentar secundária à anorexia dependente da doença, a malnutrição resulta de perdas proteicas devidas à má absorção que ocorre na mucosa intestinal inflamada e à enteropatia perdedora de proteínas associada à diarreia. Além de proteínas, há diminuição do aporte e consequente défice de proteínas, ferro, cálcio e vitamina D, entre outros.

Moreover, both

Moreover, both AG-014699 supplier hydroquinone and its degradation product benzoquinone are topoisomerase II poisons which inhibit the final ligation step of the catalytic cycle of the enzyme, thus stabilizing topoisomerase-mediated DNA scissions (Lindsey et al., 2005). Although the relative contributions of reactive oxygen species and topoisomerases in hydroquinone-mediated genotoxicity remain to be elucidated, it is clear that that DNA breaks generated by hydroquinone pose a serious challenge to genome integrity [5] and [11]. Herein, we have analyzed

the capacity of hydroquinone to generate both single and double-strand DNA breaks using the well characterized comet assay under alkaline conditions (cf Table 1). We showed that the hydroquinone-induced increment in DNA strand breaks in HCT116 cells was dose-related. In HCT116 cells, hydroquinone at concentrations of 227.0 and 454.1 μM caused a marked increase of the olive tail moment (the product of % tail DNA and tail length) compared to lower concentrations. Hydroquinone concentrations up to 90.8 μM induced a gradual but slow increment of the olive tail moments and this was due more to the increase in the tail length of comets than to the amount of DNA in the tail. The relative amount of DNA in the comet tail (the % tail DNA or tail

intensity) has been related to DNA break frequency over a wide genome range, while tail length has been related to the frequency of the smallest detectable DNA fragments

and, INCB024360 in vitro since it quickly reaches a maximum, its useful only for low levels of damage [2]. Taking this into account, we can say that hydroquinone concentrations higher than 90.8 μM are required in order to induce a high frequency of DNA breaks throughout the whole genome of HCT116 cells, resulting in overall cell death, as evidenced by the survivability assay (Fig. 2). Hydroquinone alone induced greater loss of viability in HTC116 cells than in fibroblasts Smoothened cells (cf Fig. 1) but surprisingly, when cells were exposed to medium previously incubated with P. chrysogenum var. halophenolicum, fibroblast survivability seemed to be dependent on more than just the remaining hydroquinone concentration in the medium. This suggests that fibroblasts are more sensitive than HCT116 cells to the metabolites resulting from hydroquinone degradation. Interestingly, the comet assay data also indicates that, except for very high remaining hydroquinone concentrations, DNA strand breaks are not the major cause of the viability loss in fibroblasts after fungal treatment (compare Fig. 2 and Fig. 6). This data suggest that the toxic effect of the hydroquinone metabolites originated by fungal treatment on primary fibroblasts may be due to a mechanism which does not involve DNA damage. This increase of DNA damage on fibroblasts and HCT116 cells may be due to fungal metabolites originated during hydroquinone degradation.