Military personnel deployed in combat operations are highly prone to develop Parkinson's disease (PD) in later lives. PD largely involves dopaminergic pathways with hallmarks of increased alpha synuclein (ASNC), and phosphorylated tau (p-tau) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) precipitating brain pathology. However, increased histaminergic nerve fibers in substantia nigra pars Compacta (SNpc), striatum (STr) and caudate putamen (CP) associated with upregulation of Histamine H3 receptors and downregulation of H4 receptors in human cases of PD is observed in postmortem cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Cell Neurosci
February 2020
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2018.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Functional restoration after spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most challenging tasks in neurological clinical practice. With a view to exploring effective neurorestorative methods in the acute, subacute, and chronic phases of SCI, "Clinical Therapeutic Guidelines of Neurorestoration for Spinal Cord Injury (China Version 2016)" was first proposed in 2016 by the Chinese Association of Neurorestoratology (CANR). Given the rapid advances in this field in recent years, the International Association of Neurorestoratology (IANR) and CANR formed and approved the "Clinical Neurorestorative Therapeutic Guidelines for Spinal Cord Injury (IANR/CANR version 2019)".
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProg Brain Res
June 2019
The mechanisms regulating differentiation of multipotent oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) into mature oligodendrocytes (OLs) are critical to our understanding of myelination and remyelination. Following acute demyelination in the central nervous system, adult OPCs migrate to the injury site, differentiate into OLs and generate new myelin sheaths. A common feature of regenerative processes is the fact that remyelination efficiency declines with aging and, accounts for the observation that chronic demyelinating diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) are characterized by an ineffective remyelination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression which may be triggered by both genetic and environmental factors, and independent from changes to the underlying DNA sequence-a change in phenotype without a change in genotype-which in turn affects how cells read genes. Epigenetic changes represent a regular and natural occurrence but can be influenced also by factors such as age, environment, and disease state. Epigenetic modifications can manifest themselves not only as the manner in which cells terminally differentiate, but can have also deleterious effects, resulting in diseases such as cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Acute-phase response is a systemic reaction to environmental/inflammatory insults and involves production of acute-phase proteins, including serum amyloid A (SAA). Interleukin-1β (IL-1β), a master regulator of neuroinflammation produced by activated inflammatory cells of the myeloid lineage, in particular microglia, plays a key role in the pathogenesis of acute and chronic diseases of the peripheral nervous system and CNS. IL-1β release is promoted by ATP acting at the purinergic P2X receptor (P2XR) in cells primed with toll-like receptor (TLR) ligands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCNS Neurol Disord Drug Targets
June 2019
Cell Transplant
February 2018
Cell therapy has been shown to be a key clinical therapeutic option for central nervous system diseases or damage. Standardization of clinical cell therapy procedures is an important task for professional associations devoted to cell therapy. The Chinese Branch of the International Association of Neurorestoratology (IANR) completed the first set of guidelines governing the clinical application of neurorestoration in 2011.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Cell Neurosci
March 2018
Inflammation is a complex biological response fundamental to how the body deals with injury and infection to eliminate the initial cause of cell injury and effect repair. Unlike a normally beneficial acute inflammatory response, chronic inflammation can lead to tissue damage and ultimately its destruction, and often results from an inappropriate immune response. Inflammation in the nervous system ("neuroinflammation"), especially when prolonged, can be particularly injurious.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic pain is an important health and social problem. Misuse and abuse of opioids in chronic non-cancer pain management seem to be a huge problem, in some countries. This could probably affect the normal use of such analgesics in patients in need of them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCNS Neurol Disord Drug Targets
March 2019
CNS Neurol Disord Drug Targets
March 2019
The perspective of neuroinflammation as an epiphenomenon following neuron damage is being replaced by the awareness of glia and their importance in neural functions and disorders. Systemic inflammation generates signals that communicate with the brain and leads to changes in metabolism and behavior, with microglia assuming a pro-inflammatory phenotype. Identification of potential peripheral-to-central cellular links is thus a critical step in designing effective therapeutics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe protocol in this chapter presents a method to actively induce experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), one of the most widely used animal models to study efficacy of potential drugs for treatment of multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system and the most common cause of chronic neurological impairment in young people. In this model EAE is induced in female C57BL/6 mice by immunization with an emulsion of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (fragment 35-55) in complete Freund's adjuvant, followed by administration of pertussis toxin in phosphate-buffered saline.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlial cell activation, in particular microglia, plays an important role in the pathogenesis of various neurodegenerative disorders as well as in chronic and neuropathic pain. This chapter compares two established cell enumeration assays, namely, the colorimetric 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide assay and the protein-binding sulforhodamine B assay for microglia as a function of culture condition and activation state. The pros and cons of each are then described.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe protocol presented in this chapter covers the application of rat cortical oligodendrocyte progenitor cells cultured under conditions of differentiation for the evaluation of agents with potential trophic activity, that is, which are capable of promoting maturation under such conditions. As an example we have chosen a co-ultramicronized N-palmitoylethanolamine/luteolin composite, a formulation described in the literature as possessing anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, and neuroregenerative actions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlial cell activation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of various neurodegenerative disorders as well as in chronic and neuropathic pain. This chapter describes a model which allows one to assess the individual and combined contributions of astrocytes and microglia in response to a pro-inflammatory stimulus, with emphasis on ionotropic purinergic receptors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDopaminergic neuronal cell degeneration is the principal characteristic feature of the neuropathology of Parkinson disease. Cultures of mesencephalic neurons are widely used as a source of dopaminergic neurons for the study of mechanisms implicated in dopaminergic cell death and for the evaluation of potential dopaminergic neuroprotective agents, including neurotrophic factors. This chapter presents a detailed protocol for the preparation of rat mesencephalic cell cultures and their application to evaluating the effect of the dopaminergic neurotoxin 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium and the neuroprotective action of brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlial cell activation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of various neurodegenerative disorders. This article presents a protocol for the preparation of cultures consisting of rat embryonic cortical neurons grown in the presence of cortical microglia, in which the glia are present in physical contact with the neurons or separated by a semipermeable membrane barrier. An example of how such systems can be used to evaluate potential neuroprotective agents will also be described.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe protocol described in this chapter covers the preparation and culture of enriched populations of microglia, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes from the cortex and spinal cord of neonatal rat and mouse. The procedure is based on enzymatic digestion of the tissue, followed by the culture of a mixed glial cell population which is then utilized as the starting point for the isolation, via differential attachment, of the different cell types.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurons cultured from rodent central nervous system tissues represent important tools in the study of neurodegenerative disease mechanisms and neuroregenerative processes, including the survival- and axon growth-promoting properties of neurotrophic factors. This chapter presents a detailed protocol for the preparation of rat and mouse cortical, hippocampal, and striatal neuron cell cultures, using either embryonic or postnatal tissue with enzymatic digestion.
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