These intriguing findings suggest that further investigation is essential to address if mDia1 plays roles in human diabetic neuropathy. Perhaps the impact of mDia1 in this setting is RAGE independent; for example, these findings might suggest that mDia1 contribution to the neuropathy pathogenesis might be a result of its primary, rho-mediated cytoskeleton regulatory functions (Rose et al. 2005; Shinohara et al. 2012), and is complementary to RAGE-stimulated phosphorylation of Akt (protein kinase B)

and cell proliferation/migration observed in other cell types such as smooth muscle cells (Rai et al. 2012). More detailed studies have been designed to decipher the role and expression

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of these proteins over long periods of time in the human Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical peripheral nerve. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Ms. Latoya Woods for her excellent technical assistance with manuscript preparations (Diabetes Research Center, New York University Medical Center). Conflict of Interest None declared.
Asahara et al. (1997) described endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) in human peripheral blood. EPC are immature endothelial circulating cells mobilized from the bone marrow. These cells are involved in repairing the damaged Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical endothelium and in facilitating neovascularization after ischemia (Asahara et al. 1997; Urbich and Dimmeler 2004; Fadini et al. 2007; Rouhl et al. 2008). The role of EPC in health and disease is not understood completely. Most studies of healthy subjects and patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) report that the number and function of circulating EPC decrease with age and with the presence of classical

vascular risk factors (Hristov Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and Weber 2004; Fadini et al. 2007). Also, EPC levels (counts) increase after an ischemic event and a low number of EPC predict a higher frequency of vascular events during follow-up in healthy subjects (Hill et al. 2003) and in patients with CAD (Werner et Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical al. 2005). These studies suggest that EPC play an important role in the risk of vascular events and in vascular Phosphoprotein phosphatase homeostasis. EPC counts have not been studied frequently in patients with ischemic stroke, and the GSK126 results are conflicting. Some studies (Ghani et al. 2005; Chu et al. 2008; Zhou et al. 2009) reported lower counts of EPC in patients in the acute stage of ischemia compared to controls, while other studies (Dunac et al. 2007; Yip et al. 2008, 2011; Navarro-Sobrino et al. 2010) reported the opposite. Moreover, higher EPC levels have been associated with a favorable short and long-term outcome in some studies (Sobrino et al. 2007; Yip et al. 2008; Taguchi et al. 2009). Unfortunately, these investigations did not focus on the variables associated with the EPC counts and did not evaluate the significance of stroke etiology.