Microtubules (MTs) are essential components of the cytoskeleton that play critical roles in neurodevelopment and adaptive central nervous system functioning. MTs are essential to growth cone advance and ultrastructural events integral to synaptic plasticity; these functions figure significantly into current pathophysiologic conceptualizations of schizophrenia. To date, no study has directly investigated MT dynamics in humans with schizophrenia. We therefore compared the stability of MTs in olfactory neuroepithelial (OE) cells between schizophrenia cases and matched nonpsychiatric comparison subjects. For this purpose, we applied nocodazole (Nz) to cultured OE cells obtained from tissue biopsies from seven living schizophrenia patients and seven matched comparison subjects; all schizophrenia cases were on antipsychotic medications. Nz allows MT depolymerization to be followed but prevents repolymerization, so that in living cells treated for varying time intervals, the MTs that are stable for a given treatment interval remain. Our readout of MT stability was the time at which fewer than 10 MTs per cell could be distinguished by anti-β-tubulin immunofluorescence. The percentage of cells with ≥10 intact MTs at specified intervals following Nz treatment was estimated by systematic uniform random sampling with Visiopharm software. These analyses showed that the mean percentages of OE cells with intact MTs were significantly greater for schizophrenia cases than for the matched comparison subjects at 10, 15, and 30min following Nz treatment indicating increased MT stability in OE cells from schizophrenia patients (p=0.0007 at 10min; p=0.0008 at 15min; p=0.036 at 30min). In conclusion, we have demonstrated increased MT stability in nearly all cultures of OE cells from individuals with schizophrenia, who received several antipsychotic treatments, versus comparison subjects matched for age and sex. While we cannot rule out a possible confounding effect of antipsychotic medications, these findings may reflect analogous neurobiological events in at least a subset of immature neurons or other cell types during gestation, or newly generated cells destined for the olfactory bulb or hippocampus, suggesting a mechanism that underlies findings of postmortem and neuroimaging investigations of schizophrenia. Future studies aimed at replicating these findings, including samples of medication-naïve subjects with schizophrenia, and reconciling the results with other studies, will be necessary. Although the observed abnormalities may suggest one of a number of putative pathophysiologic anomalies in schizophrenia, this work may ultimately have implications for an improved understanding of pathogenic processes related to this disorder.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2013.10.015 | DOI Listing |
Optom Vis Sci
January 2025
Indiana University School of Optometry, Bloomington, Indiana.
Purpose: This study investigated how obstacle contrast altered gait behavior of healthy younger and older adults.
Methods: Twenty normally sighted adults, 11 older (mean [standard deviation] age, 68.1 [5.
Background: In developing countries, rheumatic mitral valve stenosis (MS) is still a problem and its progression leads to left atrial (LA) damage. Due to the complexity of the LA geometry, currently used techniques like antero-posterior dimension (LAD) and 2D echo derived LA volume (LAV) have several limitations that are corrected by 3D derived LA volumes in addition to functional evaluation.
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Transl Vis Sci Technol
January 2025
School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a deep-learning model for noninvasive anemia detection, hemoglobin (Hb) level estimation, and identification of anemia-related retinal features using fundus images.
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Clin Oral Investig
January 2025
Institute of Science and Technology, Division of Periodontics, São Paulo State University (Unesp), Av. Eng. Francisco José Longo, 777, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, 12245-000, Brazil.
Objective: This study aimed to compare the salivary protein profile in individuals with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM2) and periodontitis and their respective controls.
Methods: Eighty participants were included in the study. The four groups were formed by individuals with DM2 and periodontitis (DM2 + P, n = 20), DM2 without periodontitis (DM2, n = 20), periodontitis without DM2 (P, n = 20) and individuals without periodontitis and without DM2 (H, n = 20).
Eur Thyroid J
January 2025
L Chen, Department of Breast and Thyroid Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Army Medical University, Chongqing, 400038, China.
Background Selection between open thyroidectomy (OT) and minimally invasive (endoscopic/robotic) thyroidectomy (MT) for patients with thyroid cancer has been a subject of considerable debate. Comprehensive analysis of the short-term outcomes of endoscopic thyroidectomy (ET), robotic thyroidectomy (RT) and OT for thyroid cancer using a large-scale dataset is important. Methods This cohort study evaluated the outcomes of patients receiving ET, RT vs OT for thyroid cancer from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2022.
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