Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0004134 (ataxia)
15,886 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A 12-year-old girl developed ataxia that gradually progressed. At age 18 the patient presented with mental retardation, cachectic dwarfism, microcephalus, and a progeroid appearance but no photosensitive skin lesions or deafness. On analysis of fibroblasts, unscheduled DNA synthesis was reduced to 50% of normal, but colony-forming ability after ultraviolet irradiation was normal. The symptoms and phenotype of the patient were distinguished from those in Cockayne syndrome and xeroderma pigmentosum. This case is interesting because the defect in DNA repair after ultraviolet irradiation was detected in a patient with neurologic disturbances but without photosensitive skin lesions.
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PMID:A DNA repair defect in a patient with ataxia, mental retardation, and short stature. 958 36

Laboratory mice carrying the nonfunctional xeroderma pigmentosum group G gene (the mouse counterpart of the human XPG gene) alleles have been generated by using gene-targeting and embryonic stem cell technology. Homozygote animals of this autosomal recessive disease exhibited signs and symptoms, such as postnatal growth retardation, reduced levels of activity, progressive ataxia and premature death, similar to the clinical manifestations of Cockayne syndrome (CS). Histological analysis of the cerebellum revealed multiple pyknotic cells in the Purkinje cell layer of the xpg homozygotes, which had atrophic cell bodies and shrunken nuclei. Further examination by an immunohistochemistry for calbindin-D 28k (CaBP) showed that a large number of immunoreactive Purkinje cells were atrophic and their dendritic trees were smaller and shorter than in wild-type littermates. These results indicated a marked degeneration of Purkinje cells in the xpg mutant cerebellum. Study by in situ detection of DNA fragmentation in the cerebellar cortex demonstrated that some deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP-biotin in situ nick labeling (TUNEL)-positive cells appeared in the granule layer of the mutant mice, but few cell deaths were confirmed in the Purkinje layer. These results suggested Purkinje cell degeneration in the mutant cerebellum was underway, in which much Purkinje cell death had not appeared, and the appearance of some abnormal cerebellar symptoms in the xpg-deficient mice was not only due to a marked Purkinje cell degeneration, but also to damage of other cells.
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PMID:Purkinje cell degeneration in mice lacking the xeroderma pigmentosum group G gene. 1134 Jun 41

Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) and Cockayne syndrome (CS) are rare autosomal recessive disorders associated with a defect in the nucleotide excision repair (NER) pathway required for the removal of DNA damage induced by UV light and distorting chemical adducts. Although progressive neurological dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of CS and of some groups of XP patients, the causative mechanisms are largely unknown. Here we show that mice lacking both the XPA (XP-group A) and CSB (CS-group B) genes in contrast to the single mutants display severe growth retardation, ataxia, and motor dysfunction during early postnatal development. Their cerebella are hypoplastic and showed impaired foliation and stunted Purkinje cell dendrites. Reduced neurogenesis and increased apoptotic cell death occur in the cerebellar external granular layer. These findings suggest that XPA and CSB have additive roles in the mouse nervous system and support a crucial role for these genes in normal brain development.
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PMID:Early postnatal ataxia and abnormal cerebellar development in mice lacking Xeroderma pigmentosum Group A and Cockayne syndrome Group B DNA repair genes. 1169 74

This is the first detailed description of the neuropathology of a patient with xeroderma pigmentosum/Cockayne syndrome complex (XP/CS). This 6-year-old boy's clinical course, followed from infancy to death, is compared with that of the eight other known cases of XP/CS. Normal at birth, he developed the cutaneous sun sensitivity of XP in infancy and the infantile CS phenotype in early childhood. He had the characteristic CS facies, cachexia, failure of somatic and brain growth, spasticity, ataxia, pigmentary retinopathy, hearing loss, mixed peripheral neuropathy, and myopathy. Like his clinical phenotype, the neuropathology was also that of CS despite an XPG genotype. His brain weighed 350 grams (considerably less than the expected weight at birth) and revealed hydrocephalus, tigroid-type demyelination, dystrophic calcification and widespread neuronal loss and gliosis with hyperchromatic glial and endothelial nuclei. Peripheral nerve showed myelinopathy with axonal degeneration, and skeletal muscle had mixed myopathic and neuropathic features. Ophthalmic pathology disclosed cataracts, iris and ciliary body atrophy, inner retinal atrophy and gliosis, retinal pigment epithelial atrophy, and optic nerve atrophy. Molecular studies, which have appeared elsewhere, do not provide full understanding of the pathophysiology of the postnatal growth failure, cachexia, precocious aging, selectivity of tissues affected (such as myelinated axons), and other manifestations of this devastating illness.
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PMID:Xeroderma pigmentosum/cockayne syndrome complex: first neuropathological study and review of eight other cases. 1176 81

As one part of a distinguished scientific career, Dr. Bryn Bridges focused his attention on the issue of DNA damage and repair in stationary phase bacteria. His work in this area led to his interest in DNA repair and mutagenesis in another non-dividing cell population, the neurons in the mammalian nervous system. He has specifically taken an interest in the magnocellular neurons of the central nervous system, and the possibility that somatic mutations may be occurring in these neurons. As part of this special issue dedicated to Bryn Bridges upon his retirement, I will discuss the various DNA repair pathways known to be active in the nervous system. The importance of DNA repair to the nervous system is most graphically illustrated by the neurological abnormalities observed in patients with hereditary diseases associated with defects in DNA repair. I will consider the mechanisms underlying the neurological abnormalities observed in patients with four of these diseases: xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), Cockayne's syndrome (CS), ataxia telangectasia (AT) and AT-like disorder (ATLD). I will also propose a mechanism for one of the observations indicating that somatic mutation can occur in the magnocellular neurons of the aging rat brain. Finally, as a parallel to Bridges inquiry into how much DNA synthesis is going on in stationary phase bacteria, I will address the question of how much DNA synthesis in going on in neurons, and the implications of the answer to this question for recent studies of neurogenesis in adult mammals.
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PMID:DNA repair in neural cells: basic science and clinical implications. 1242 33

Cockayne syndrome and xeroderma pigmentosum-Cockayne syndrome complex are rare autosomal recessive disorders with poorly understood biology. They are characterized by profound postnatal brain and somatic growth failure and by degeneration of multiple tissues resulting in cachexia, dementia, and premature aging. They result in premature death, usually in childhood, exceptionally in adults. This study compares the clinical course and pathology of a man with Cockayne syndrome group A who died at age 31(1/2) years with 15 adequately documented other adults with Cockayne syndrome and 5 with xeroderma pigmentosum-Cockayne syndrome complex. Slowing of head and somatic growth was apparent before age 2 years, mental retardation and slowly progressive spasticity at 4 years, ataxia and hearing loss at 9 years, visual impairment at 14 years, typical Cockayne facies at 17 years, and cachexia and dementia in his twenties, with a retained outgoing personality. He experienced several transient right and left hemipareses and two episodes of status epilepticus following falls. Neuropathology disclosed profound microencephaly, bilateral old subdural hematomas, white-matter atrophy, tigroid leukodystrophy with string vessels, oligodendrocyte proliferation, bizarre reactive astrocytes, multifocal dystrophic calcification that was most marked in the basal ganglia, advanced atherosclerosis, mixed demyelinating and axonal neuropathy, and neurogenic muscular atrophy. Cellular degeneration of the organ of Corti, spiral and vestibular ganglia, and all chambers of the eye was severe. Rarely, and for unexplained reasons, in some patients with Cockayne syndrome the course is slower than usual, resulting in survival into adulthood. The profound dwarfing, failure of brain growth, cachexia, selectivity of tissue degeneration, and poor correlation between genotypes and phenotypes are not understood. Deficient repair of DNA can increase vulnerability to oxidative stress and play a role in the premature aging, but why patients with mutations in xeroderma pigmentosum genes present with the Cockayne syndrome phenotype is still not known.
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PMID:Cockayne syndrome in adults: review with clinical and pathologic study of a new case. 1709 72

Cockayne syndrome (CS) is a rare recessive childhood-onset neurodegenerative disease, characterized by a deficiency in the DNA repair pathway of transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair. Mice with a targeted deletion of the CSB gene (Csb-/-) exhibit a much milder ataxic phenotype than human patients. Csb-/- mice that are also deficient in global genomic repair [Csb-/-/xeroderma pigmentosum C (Xpc)-/-] are more profoundly affected, exhibiting whole-body wasting, ataxia, and neural loss by postnatal day 21. Cerebellar granule cells demonstrated high TUNEL staining indicative of apoptosis. Purkinje cells, identified by the marker calbindin, were severely depleted and, although not TUNEL-positive, displayed strong immunoreactivity for p53, indicating cellular stress. A subset of animals heterozygous for Csb and Xpc deficiencies was more mildly affected, demonstrating ataxia and Purkinje cell loss at 3 months of age. Mouse, Csb-/-, and Xpc-/- embryonic fibroblasts each exhibited increased sensitivity to UV light, which generates bulky DNA damage that is a substrate for excision repair. Whereas Csb-/-/Xpc-/- fibroblasts were more UV-sensitive than either single knockout, double-heterozygote fibroblasts had normal UV sensitivity. Csb-/- mice crossed with a strain defective in base excision repair (Ogg1) demonstrated no enhanced neurodegenerative phenotype. Complete deficiency in nucleotide excision repair therefore renders the brain profoundly sensitive to neurodegeneration in specific cell types of the cerebellum, possibly because of unrepaired endogenous DNA damage that is a substrate for nucleotide but not base excision repair.
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PMID:Increased apoptosis, p53 up-regulation, and cerebellar neuronal degeneration in repair-deficient Cockayne syndrome mice. 1722 34

In this Review, familial and sporadic neurological disorders reported to have an etiological link with DNA repair defects are discussed, with special emphasis placed on the molecular link between the disease phenotype and the precise DNA repair defect. Of the 15 neurological disorders listed, some of which have symptoms of progeria, six--spinocerebellar ataxia with axonal neuropathy-1, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Down syndrome and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--seem to result from increased oxidative stress, and the inability of the base excision repair pathway to handle the damage to DNA that this induces. Five of the conditions (xeroderma pigmentosum, Cockayne's syndrome, trichothiodystrophy, Down syndrome, and triple-A syndrome) display a defect in the nucleotide excision repair pathway, four (Huntington's disease, various spinocerebellar ataxias, Friedreich's ataxia and myotonic dystrophy types 1 and 2) exhibit an unusual expansion of repeat sequences in DNA, and four (ataxia-telangiectasia, ataxia-telangiectasia-like disorder, Nijmegen breakage syndrome and Alzheimer's disease) exhibit defects in genes involved in repairing double-strand breaks. The current overall picture indicates that oxidative stress is a major causative factor in genomic instability in the brain, and that the nature of the resulting neurological phenotype depends on the pathway through which the instability is normally repaired.
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PMID:Mechanisms of disease: DNA repair defects and neurological disease. 1734 92

A comparative evaluation is reported of pro-oxidant states in 82 patients with ataxia telangectasia (AT), Bloom syndrome (BS), Down syndrome (DS), Fanconi anemia (FA), Werner syndrome (WS), and xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) vs 98 control donors. These disorders display cancer proneness, and/or early aging, and/or other clinical features. The measured analytes were: (a) leukocyte and urinary 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), (b) blood glutathione (GSSG and GSH), (c) plasma glyoxal (Glx) and methylglyoxal (MGlx), and (d) some plasma antioxidants [uric acid (UA) and ascorbic acid (AA)]. Leukocyte 8-OHdG levels ranked as follows: WS>BS approximately FA approximately XP>DS approximately AT approximately controls. Urinary 8-OHdG levels were significantly increased in a total of 22 patients with BS, FA, or XP vs 47 controls. The GSSG:GSH ratio was significantly increased in patients with WS and in young (< or =15 years) patients with DS or with FA and decreased in older patients with DS or FA and in AT, BS, and XP patients. The plasma levels of Glx and/or MGlx were significantly increased in patients with WS, FA, and DS. The UA and AA levels were significantly increased in WS and DS patients, but not in AT, FA, BS, nor XP patients. Rationale for chemoprevention trials is discussed.
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PMID:Different patterns of in vivo pro-oxidant states in a set of cancer- or aging-related genetic diseases. 1805 16

Inorganic arsenic increases urinary bladder transitional cell carcinoma in humans. In F344 rats, dimethylarsinic acid (DMA[V]) increases transitional cell carcinoma. Arsenic-induced inhibition of DNA repair has been reported in cultured cell lines and in lymphocytes of arsenic-exposed humans, but it has not been studied in urinary bladder. Should inhibition of DNA damage repair in transitional epithelium occur, it may contribute to carcinogenesis or cocarcinogenesis. We investigated morphology and expression of DNA repair genes in F344 rat transitional cells following up to 100 ppm DMA(V) in drinking water for four weeks. Mitochondria were very sensitive to DMA(V), and swollen mitochondria appeared to be the main source of vacuoles in the transitional epithelium. Real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (Real-Time RT PCR) showed the mRNA levels of tested DNA repair genes, ataxia telangectasia mutant (ATM), X-ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1), excision repair cross-complementing group 3/xeroderma pigmentosum B (ERCC3/XPB), and DNA polymerase beta (Polbeta), were not altered by DMA(V). These data suggested that either DMA(V) does not affect DNA repair in the bladder or DMA(V) affects DNA repair without affecting baseline mRNA levels of repair genes. The possibility remains that DMA(V) may lower damage-induced increases in repair gene expression or cause post-translational modification of repair enzymes.
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PMID:Dimethylarsinic acid in drinking water changed the morphology of urinary bladder but not the expression of DNA repair genes of bladder transitional epithelium in F344 rats. 1938 86


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