Neuronal ablation of mt-AspRS in mice induces immune pathway activation prior to severe and progressive cortical and behavioral disruption.

Leukoencephalopathy with brainstem and spinal cord involvement and lactate elevation (LBSL) is a rare, slowly progressive white matter disease caused by mutations in the mitochondrial aspartyl-tRNA synthetase (mt-AspRS, or DARS2). While patients show characteristic MRI T2 signal abnormalities throughout the cerebral white matter, brainstem, and spinal cord, the phenotypic spectrum is broad and a multitude of gene variants have been associated with the disease. Here, Dars2 disruption in CamKIIα-expressing cortical and hippocampal neurons results in slowly progressive increases in behavioral activity at five months, and culminating by nine months as severe brain atrophy, behavioral dysfunction, reduced corpus callosum thickness, and microglial morphology indicative of neuroinflammation.

Dendrimer-N-acetyl-L-cysteine modulates monophagocytic response in adrenoleukodystrophy.

Objective: X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) is a neurodegenerative disorder due to mutations in the peroxisomal very long-chain fatty acyl-CoA transporter, ABCD1, with limited therapeutic options. ALD may manifest in a slowly progressive adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) phenotype, or switch to rapid inflammatory demyelinating cerebral disease (cALD), in which microglia have been shown to play a pathophysiological role. The aim of this study was to determine the role of patient phenotype in the immune response of ex vivo monophagocytic cells to stimulation, and to evaluate the efficacy of polyamidoamine dendrimer conjugated to the antioxidant precursor N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) in modulating this immune response.

Antioxidant Capacity and Superoxide Dismutase Activity in Adrenoleukodystrophy.

Importance: X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) may switch phenotype to the fatal cerebral form (ie, cerebral ALD [cALD]), the cause of which is unknown. Determining differences in antioxidant capacity and superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels between phenotypes may allow for the generation of a clinical biomarker for predicting the onset of cALD, as well as initiating a more timely lifesaving therapy.

Objective: To identify variations in the levels of antioxidant capacity and SOD activity between ALD phenotypes in patients with cALD or adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN), heterozygote female carriers, and healthy controls and, in addition, correlate antioxidant levels with clinical outcome scores to determine a possible predictive value.