The authors report about the use of molecular tracer FDDNP for diagnosis and estimation of the extent of prion pathology in the living brains of the patients with a genetic form of prion disease. They discovered that FDDNP enabled the detection of the disease in living patients with the mutated gene even before the appearance of clinical signs. The diagnostics of prion diseases is currently performed only on autopsy specimens from the brain of a patient after his death.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30622469
Possible sex-related differences regarding axon sprouting through the end-to-side nerve anastomosis, used for surgical treatment of extensive nerve injuries, have not been examined yet. The authors found that, after using this method, skin reinnervation recovered in higher percentage in female rats than in male rats, but the difference in the reinnervated skin area was not significant. More frequent skin reinnervation in female rats was due to the higher number of myelinated axons that sprouted into the anastomosed donor nerves in female than in male rats.
COBISS.SI-ID: 24140761
The authors report the latest results of their experiments showing increased expression of synaptotagmins in the brains of trangenic mice used as animal models of Alzheimer disease, and in rats in which quinolinic acid was injected into their brains to provoke epileptic seizures. The results support the hypothesis that synaptotagmins play an important role in inflamatory proceses around the amyloid plaques in Alzheimer disease as well as in excitotoxic lesions which occur in numerous brain diseases.
COBISS.SI-ID: 26264537
The authors developed a new method for 3D visualization of capillaries surrounding the muscle fibers. They studied distribution and different parametes of capillary density in relation to morphologic, metabolic and contractile properties of different muscle fibers, and in addition, the effect of nerve transection and early reinnervation of muscle on capillary parameters. Surprisingly, they found that, regardless of the innervation status, the capillary parameters depended on muscle fiber size and not on the intensity of their oxydative metabolism.
COBISS.SI-ID: 25594841
The expression of muscle collagen Q, an important synaptic protein associated with AChE, depends on muscle innervation, more specifically on the pattern of nerve-induced muscle fiber activation. Tonic activation in slow muscle fibers maintains high expression of collagen Q all along the muscle fibers via Ca-calcineurin signaling mechanism. In fast muscle fibers, the expression of collagen Q in muscle fibers is irreversibly suppressed, except in the muscle endplates, in which does not depend on calcineurin signaling.
COBISS.SI-ID: 25793753