AI Article Synopsis
- Cholesterol metabolism is crucial for maintaining the integrity of myelin and neuronal membranes in the central nervous system, with specific metabolites like 24S-hydroxysterol and 27-hydroxycholesterol serving as potential markers for neurodegenerative diseases.
- Current methods for isolating hydroxycholesterols are inefficient and fail to differentiate between biologically active free forms and inactive esterified forms, limiting their effectiveness in research.
- The study found average serum levels of free 24S-hydroxycholesterol at 12.3 ng/ml and 27-hydroxycholesterol at 17.7 ng/ml, suggesting that measuring these active oxysterols could be a valuable approach for evaluating brain health in various neurodegenerative disorders
Article Abstract
Background: Cholesterol metabolism is important for the maintenance of myelin and neuronal membranes in the central nervous system. Blood concentrations of the brain specific cholesterol metabolite 24S-hydroxysterol to the peripheral metabolite 27-hydroxycholesterol may be useful surrogate markers for neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorders, and Multiple Sclerosis. However, current methods to isolate hydroxycholesterols are labor intensive, prone to produce variable extraction efficiencies and do not discriminate between free and esterfied forms of hydroxycholesterols. Since free hydroxycholesterols are the biologically active form of these sterols, separating free from esterfied forms may provide a sensitive measure to identify disease-associated differences in brain sterol metabolism.
Results: We found that average human serum concentrations were 12.3 ± 4.79 ng/ml for free 24(s)-hydroxycholesterol and 17.7 ± 8.5 ng/ml for 27-hydroxycholesterol.
Conclusion: Serum measurements of these biologically active oxysterols may be useful surrogate measures for brain health in a variety of neurodegenerative conditions.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4304132 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12868-014-0137-z | DOI Listing |
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