Search results for "Amy"
showing 10 items of 1486 documents
Comparison of Diffusion MRI Acquisition Protocols for the In Vivo Characterization of the Mouse Spinal Cord: Variability Analysis and Application to …
2016
Diffusion-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) has relevant applications in the microstructural characterization of the spinal cord, especially in neurodegenerative diseases. Animal models have a pivotal role in the study of such diseases; however, in vivo spinal dMRI of small animals entails additional challenges that require a systematical investigation of acquisition parameters. The purpose of this study is to compare three acquisition protocols and identify the scanning parameters allowing a robust estimation of the main diffusion quantities and a good sensitivity to neurodegeneration in the mouse spinal cord. For all the protocols, the signal-to-noise and contrast-to noise ratios…
Chronic stress induces changes in the structure of interneurons and in the expression of molecules related to neuronal structural plasticity and inhi…
2011
Chronic stress in experimental animals, one of the most accepted models of chronic anxiety and depression, induces structural remodeling of principal neurons in the amygdala and increases its excitation by reducing inhibitory tone. These changes may be mediated by the polysialylated form of the neural cell adhesion molecule (PSA-NCAM), a molecule related to neuronal structural plasticity and expressed by interneurons in the adult CNS, which is downregulated in the amygdala after chronic stress. We have analyzed the amygdala of adult mice after 21 days of restraint stress, studying with qRT-PCR the expression of genes related to general and inhibitory neurotransmission, and of PSA synthesizi…
Increased CSF APPs- levels in patients with Alzheimer disease treated with acitretin
2014
Objective: We investigated induction of α-secretase A disintegrin and metalloprotease 10 (ADAM10) by the synthetic retinoid acitretin (Neotigason; Actavis, Munchen-Riem, Germany) in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease (AD) via measurement of CSF content of α-secretase–derived amyloid precursor protein (APPs-α). Methods: Twenty-one patients clinically diagnosed with mild to moderate AD received acitretin (30 mg per day) or placebo in a 4-week double-blind study. Primary endpoint was the difference of CSF APPs-α ratios calculated from the APPs-α levels after treatment and at baseline. We monitored safety and tolerability of the treatment. In addition, we assessed biomarkers such …
Electrolytic lesion of the nucleus incertus retards extinction of auditory conditioned fear
2013
Fear memory circuits in the brain function to allow animals and humans to recognize putative sources of danger and adopt an appropriate behavioral response; and research on animal models of fear have helped reveal the anatomical and neurochemical nature of these circuits. The nucleus (n.) incertus in the dorsal pontine tegmentum provides a strong GABAergic projection to forebrain ‘fear centers’ and is strongly activated by neurogenic stressors. In this study in adult male rats, we examined the effect of electrolytic lesions of n. incertus on different stages of the fear conditioning-extinction process and correlated the outcomes with anatomical data on the distribution of n. incertus-derive…
Symptom-specific amygdala hyperactivity modulates motor control network in conversion disorder
2016
Initial historical accounts as well as recent data suggest that emotion processing is dysfunctional in conversion disorder patients and that this alteration may be the pathomechanistic neurocognitive basis for symptoms in conversion disorder. However, to date evidence of direct interaction of altered negative emotion processing with motor control networks in conversion disorder is still lacking. To specifically study the neural correlates of emotion processing interacting with motor networks we used a task combining emotional and sensorimotor stimuli both separately as well as simultaneously during functional magnetic resonance imaging in a well characterized group of 13 conversion disorder…
Systemic Immune Responses in Alzheimer's Disease: In Vitro Mononuclear Cell Activation and Cytokine Production
2010
To investigate the systemic signs of immune-inflammatory responses in Alzheimer's disease (AD), in the present study we have analyzed blood lymphocyte subsets and the expression of activation markers on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from AD patients and age-matched healthy controls (HC) activated in vitro by recombinant amyloid-beta peptide (rAbeta42). Our study of AD lymphocyte subpopulations confirms the already described decrease of the absolute number and percentage of B cells when compared to HC lymphocytes, whereas the other subsets are not significantly different in patients and controls. We report the increased expression of the activation marker CD69 and of the chemoki…
ATXN2 trinucleotide repeat length correlates with risk of ALS
2017
We investigated a CAG trinucleotide repeat expansion in the ATXN2 gene in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Two new case-control studies, a British dataset of 1474 ALS cases and 567 controls, and a Dutch dataset of 1328 ALS cases and 691 controls were analyzed. In addition, to increase power, we systematically searched PubMed for case-control studies published after 1 August 2010 that investigated the association between ATXN2 intermediate repeats and ALS. We conducted a meta-analysis of the new and existing studies for the relative risks of ATXN2 intermediate repeat alleles of between 24 and 34 CAG trinucleotide repeats and ALS. There was an overall increased risk of ALS for those carry…
A Human-Humanoid Interaction Through the Use of BCI for Locked-In ALS Patients Using Neuro-Biological Feedback Fusion.
2018
This paper illustrates a new architecture for a human–humanoid interaction based on EEG-brain computer interface (EEG-BCI) for patients affected by locked-in syndrome caused by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). The proposed architecture is able to recognise users’ mental state accordingly to the biofeedback factor $\text {B}_{\text f}$ , based on users’ attention, intention, and focus, that is used to elicit a robot to perform customised behaviours. Experiments have been conducted with a population of eight subjects: four ALS patients in a near locked-in status with normal ocular movement and four healthy control subjects enrolled for age, education, and computer expertise. The results s…
Erythropoietin in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a multicentre, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, phase III study.
2015
Objective To assess the efficacy of recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Methods Patients with probable laboratory-supported, probable or definite ALS were enrolled by 25 Italian centres and randomly assigned (1:1) to receive intravenous rhEPO 40 000 IU or placebo fortnightly as add-on treatment to riluzole 100 mg daily for 12 months. The primary composite outcome was survival, tracheotomy or >23 h non-invasive ventilation (NIV). Secondary outcomes were ALSFRS-R, slow vital capacity (sVC) and quality of life (ALSAQ-40) decline. Tolerability was evaluated analysing adverse events (AEs) causing withdrawal. The randomisation sequence was computer-…
The Anti-amyloid Compound DO1 Decreases Plaque Pathology and Neuroinflammation-Related Expression Changes in 5xFAD Transgenic Mice
2018
Self-propagating amyloid-β (Aβ) aggregates or seeds possibly drive pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Small molecules targeting such structures might act therapeutically in vivo. Here, a fluorescence polarization assay was established that enables the detection of compound effects on both seeded and spontaneous Aβ42 aggregation. In a focused screen of anti-amyloid compounds, we identified Disperse Orange 1 (DO1) ([4-((4-nitrophenyl)diazenyl)-N-phenylaniline]), a small molecule that potently delays both seeded and non-seeded Aβ42 polymerization at substoichiometric concentrations. Mechanistic studies revealed that DO1 disrupts preformed fibrillar assemblies of synthetic Aβ42 peptides …