Ethanol-induced neurodegeneration in NRSF/REST neuronal conditional knockout mice

The transcription regulator, neuron-restrictive silencer factor (NRSF), also known as repressor element-1 silencing transcription factor (REST), plays an important role in neurogenesis and various neuronal diseases such as ischaemia, epilepsy, and Huntington's disease. In these disease processes, neuronal loss is associated with abnormal expression and/or localization of NRSF. Previous studies have demonstrated that NRSF regulates the effect of ethanol on neuronal cells in vitro, however, the role of NRSF in ethanol-induced neuronal cell death remains unclear. We generated nrsf conditional knockout mice using the Cre-loxP system to disrupt neuronal expression of nrsf and its truncated forms. At postnatal day 6, ethanol significantly increased the expression of REST4, a neuron-specific truncated form of NRSF, in the brains of wild type mice, and this effect was diminished in nrsf conditional knockout mice. The apoptotic effect of ethanol was pronounced in multiple brain regions of nrsf conditional mutant mice. These results indicate that NRSF, specifically REST4, may protect the developing brain from ethanol, and provide new evidence that NRSF can be a therapeutic target in foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).

Correlation between the hemoporfin-mediated photodynamic treatment response and the dermoscopy vascular pattern in patients with a port-wine stain: a prospective study

BACKGROUND

Vascular targeted photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a novel and promising therapy for the treatment of port-wine stains (PWS). There has been little prior exploration to our knowledge of how the dermatological vascular pattern may predict the response to PDT.

OBJECTIVES

To analyse whether the vascular pattern classifications of PWS by dermoscopy can predict the efficacy of PDT.

METHODS

This prospective cohort study included 163 patients with a clinical diagnosis of PWS who were treated twice with hemoporfin-mediated photodynamic therapy (HMME-PDT) at two-month intervals and followed up for 6 months. The vascular manifestations of dermoscopy with PWS were independently classified into 8 categories by 3 dermatologists. Images of the lesions were taken using VISIA, and the vascular patterns were imaged by dermoscopy by the same investigator. Images were captured before and after each treatment. The efficacy was evaluated with pre- and post-treatment VISIA images, and correlations between efficacy and vascular patterns were analysed by four dermatologists in a blinded and independent manner, between 10 January 2019 and 11 December 2019.

RESULTS

In the dermoscopy images for the whole cohort, dotted and globular vessels (15.3%), short clubbed vessels (18.4%) and curved vessels (12.9%) were highly associated with cure and beneficial treatment effects. Pale halos surrounding brown dots (8.0%) and arborizing vessels (9.8%) were mainly correlated with skin lesion alleviation. Mixed vessels (12.9%), a grey-whitish veil (11.7%) and reticular patterns (11.0%) were mainly associated with no effect. The differences between each subgroup were statistically significant (P = 0.000).

CONCLUSIONS

There is a clear correlation between the efficacy of PDT and the dermoscopy pattern in patients with PWS. Dermoscopy may therefore provide very useful clinical information prior to treatment in these cases. In addition, the vascular manifestations of PWS determined by dermoscopy help to predict response to PDT and manage patient expectations.

The diagnostic accuracy of dermoscopy and reflectance confocal microscopy for amelanotic/hypomelanotic melanoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND

Dermoscopy and reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) are noninvasive techniques for the diagnosis of skin lesions. Their accuracy for amelanotic/hypomelanotic melanoma (AHM) has not been systematically studied.

OBJECTIVES

We aimed to investigate systematically the accuracy of dermoscopy and RCM and to compare the accuracy between them for diagnosing AHM.

METHODS

We searched the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and Cochrane Library databases for eligible studies about dermoscopy, RCM and AHM from inception to 31 June 2019. The quality of the studies was assessed with the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool. The pooled results were calculated using a random effects model in Stata 14, Meta-DiSc, RevMan 5·3 and SAS 9·4. We also explored the sources of heterogeneity by sensitivity analysis.

RESULTS

Seven studies with a total of 1111 lesions were included. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of dermoscopy for the diagnosis of AHM were 61% [95% confidence interval (CI) 0·37-0·81] and 90% (95% CI 0·74-0·97), respectively. The corresponding respective values of RCM for the diagnosis of AHM were 67% (95% CI 0·51-0·81) and 89% (95% CI 0·86-0·92). In three studies including the performance of both RCM and dermoscopy, the relative diagnostic odds ratio of RCM over dermoscopy was 4·69 (95% CI 0·81-27·3) (P = 0·068).

CONCLUSIONS

Our study demonstrates that both dermoscopy and RCM offer good diagnostic accuracy with high specificity and moderate sensitivity in the diagnosis of AHM. RCM is more accurate than dermoscopy in diagnosing AHM but the comparison needs to be confirmed. What's already known about this topic? Amelanotic/hypomelanotic melanoma (AHM) is the most lethal skin cancer. The diagnosis of AHM is a great challenge because of its nonspecific clinical manifestation. Early diagnosis can improve the prognosis. Dermoscopy and reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) have high diagnostic accuracy for pigmented melanoma. What does this study add? Both dermoscopy and RCM offer good diagnostic accuracy with high specificity and moderate sensitivity for AHM. RCM might be more accurate than dermoscopy for diagnosis of AHM. More research on the diagnostic accuracy of dermoscopy and RCM for AHM is required in support of these findings.

Scaling Behavior of Quasi-One-Dimensional Vortex Avalanches in Superconducting Films

Scaling behaviour of dynamically driven vortex avalanches in superconducting YBa2Cu3O7-δ films deposited on tilted crystalline substrates has been observed using quantitative magneto-optical imaging. Two films with different tilt angles are characterized by the probability distributions of avalanche size in terms of the number of moving vortices. It is found in both samples that these distributions follow power-laws over up to three decades, and have exponents ranging between 1.0 and 1.4. The distributions also show clear finite-size scaling, when the system size is defined by the depth of the flux penetration front - a signature of self-organized criticality. A scaling relation between the avalanche size exponent and the fractal dimension, previously derived theoretically from conservation of the number of magnetic vortices in the stationary state and shown in numerical simulations, is here shown to be satisfied also experimentally.

[A case of adult onset phosphoglucomutase deficiency]

A case of 38-year-old male with adult onset phosphoglucomutase (PGM) deficiency was reported. The patient was admitted at Kawamura Hospital (Gifu City) for evaluation of easy fatiguability and exercise-induced weakness of the extremities since he was 20 years old. Physical examination revealed moderate muscle weakness, wasting of extremities, bilateral clubbed fingers and hypoesthesia of distal portion of extremities. Fasting plasma glucose was low (58 mg/dl). Venous concentration of lactate failed to rise after an ischemic forearm exercise test. An epinephrine tolerance test revealed hyperglycemic response. Studies of anaerobic glycolysis in vitro using muscle homogenates with the substrate between glucose-1-phosphate and glucose-6-phosphate showed decreased lactate production. Direct assay of individual muscle glycolytic enzymes demonstrated reduction of PGM activity (15% of normal, n = 12). Biopsy study with PAS staining of quadriceps femoris muscle demonstrated small amount of deeply staining glycogen in subsarcolemmal area. Electron microscopic examination revealed muscle destruction with small amount of glycogen in subsarcolemmal and intermyofibrillar spaces. Sural nerve biopsy showed degeneration of myelinated and unmyelinated fibers but there was no apparent accumulation of glycogen. From the clinical, biochemical and histopathological evidences, the patient might be a rare case of adult onset PGM deficiency.

Implantation of human urine stem cells promotes neural repair in spinal cord injury rats associated cadeharin-1 and integrin subunit beta 1 expression

BACKGROUND

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of human urine-derived stem cells (HUSCs) for the treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI) and investigate associated the molecular network mechanism by using bioinformatics combined with experimental validation.

METHODS

After the contusive SCI model was established, the HUSC-expressed specific antigen marker was implanted into the injury site immediately, and the Basso, Beattie and Bresnahan locomotor rating scale (BBB scale) was utilized to evaluate motor function so as to determine the effect of HUSCs for the neural repair after SCI. Then, the geneCards database was used to collect related gene targets for both HUSCs and SCI, and cross genes were merged with the findings of PubMed screen. Subsequently, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment, as well as core network construction, were performed using Cytoscape software. Lastly, real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and immunofluorescence were employed to validate the mRNA expression and localization of 10 hub genes, and two of the most important, designated as cadherin 1 (CDH1) and integrin subunit beta 1 (ITGB1), were identified successfully.

RESULTS

The immunophenotypes of HUSCs were marked by CD90+ and CD44+ but not CD45, and flow cytometry confirmed their character. The expression rates of CD90, CD73, CD44 and CD105 in HUSCs were 99.49, 99.77, 99.82 and 99.51%, respectively, while the expression rates of CD43, CD45, CD11b and HLA-DR were 0.08, 0.30, 1.34 and 0.02%, respectively. After SCI, all rats appeared to have severe motor dysfunction, but the BBB score was increased in HUSC-transplanted rats compared with control rats at 28 days. By using bioinformatics, we obtained 6668 targets for SCI and 1095 targets for HUSCs and identified a total of 645 cross targets between HUSCs and SCI. Based on the PPI and Cytoscape analysis, CD44, ACTB, FN1, ITGB1, HSPA8, CDH1, ALB, HSP90AA1 and GAPDH were identified as possible therapeutic targets. Enrichment analysis revealed that the involved signal pathways included complement and coagulation cascades, lysosome, systemic lupus erythematosus, etc. Lastly, quantificational real-time (qRT)-PCR confirmed the mRNA differential expression of CDH1/ITGB1 after HUSC therapy, and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunofluorescence staining showed that the astrocyte proliferation at the injured site could be reduced significantly after HUSC treatment.

CONCLUSIONS

We validated that HUSC implantation is effective for the treatment of SCI, and the underlying mechanisms associated with the multiple molecular network. Of these, CDH1 and ITGB1 may be considered as important candidate targets. Those findings therefore provided the crucial evidence for the potential use of HUSCs in SCI treatment in future clinic trials.