Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0030567 (Parkinson's disease)
 63,064 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Despite its thorough enzymological and biochemical characterization the exact function of prolyl oligopeptidase (PO, E.C. 3.4.21.26) remains unclear. The positive effect of PO inhibitors on learning and memory in animal models for amnesia, enzyme activity measurements in patient samples and (neuro)peptide degradation studies link the enzyme with neurodegenerative disorders. The brain protein alpha-synuclein currently attracts much attention because of its proposed role in the pathology of Parkinson's disease. A fundamental question concerns how the essentially disordered protein is transformed into the highly organized fibrils that are found in Lewy bodies, the hallmarks of Parkinson's disease. Using gel electrophoresis and MALDI TOF/TOF mass spectrometry we investigated the possibility of alpha-synuclein as a PO substrate. We found that in vitro incubation of the protein with PO did not result in truncation of full-length alpha-synuclein. Surprisingly, however, we found an acceleration of the aggregation process of alpha-synuclein using turbidity measurements that was reversed by specific inhibitors of PO enzymatic activity. If PO displays this activity also in vivo, PO inhibitors might have an effect on neurodegenerative disorders through a decrease in the aggregation of alpha-synuclein.
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PMID:Prolyl oligopeptidase stimulates the aggregation of alpha-synuclein. 1857 Dec 85

Glutamate antagonists decrease dyskinesia and augment the antiparkinsonian effects of levodopa in animal models of Parkinson's disease (PD). In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, we investigated the acute effects of placebo and two doses of a NR2B subunit selective NMDA glutamate antagonist, CP-101,606, on the response to 2-hour levodopa infusions in 12 PD subjects with motor fluctuations and dyskinesia. Both doses of CP-101,606 reduced the maximum severity of levodopa-induced dyskinesia approximately 30% but neither dose improved Parkinsonism. CP-101,606 was associated with a dose-related dissociation and amnesia. These results support the hypothesis that glutamate antagonists may be useful antidyskinetic agents. However, future studies will have to determine if the benefits of dyskinesia suppression can be achieved without adverse cognitive effects.
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PMID:Effects of a NR2B selective NMDA glutamate antagonist, CP-101,606, on dyskinesia and Parkinsonism. 1875 56

The nerve growth factor (NGF) is essential for the survival of both peripheral ganglion cells and central cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain. The accelerated loss of central cholinergic neurons during Alzheimer's disease may be a determinant cause of dementia, and this observation may suggest a possible therapeutic benefit from treatment with NGF. In recent years, convincing data have been published involving neurotrophic factors for the modulation of dopaminergic transmission within the brain and concerning the ability of NGF to prevent the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons. In this connection, the administration of NGF may slow down the progression of Parkinson's disease. However, NGF, as well as other peptidic neurotrophic factors, does not significantly penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB) from the circulation. Therefore, any clinical usefulness of NGF as a potential CNS therapy will depend on the use of a suitable carrier system that enhances its transport through the BBB. The present study investigates brain delivery of NGF adsorbed on poly(butyl cyanoacrylate) (PBCA) nanoparticles coated with polysorbate 80 and the pharmacological efficacy of this delivery system in the model of acute scopolamine-induced amnesia in rats as well as in the model of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-induced Parkinsonian syndrome. As shown by the passive avoidance reflex (PAR) test, the intravenous administration of the nanoparticle-bound NGF successfully reversed scopolamine-induced amnesia and improved recognition and memory. This formulation also demonstrated a significant reduction of the basic symptoms of Parkinsonism (oligokinesia, rigidity, tremor). In addition, the efficient transport of NGF across the BBB was confirmed by direct measurement of NGF concentrations in the murine brain. These results demonstrate that the PBCA nanoparticles coated with polysorbate 80 are an effective carrier system for the transport of NGF to the central nervous system across the BBB following intravenous injection. This approach may improve the NGF-based therapy of age-related neurodegenerative diseases.
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PMID:Brain targeting of nerve growth factor using poly(butyl cyanoacrylate) nanoparticles. 1969 10

Caffeine, the most widely consumed psychoactive drug, enhances attention/vigilance, stabilizes mood, and might also independently enhance cognitive performance. Notably, caffeine displays clearer and more robust beneficial effects on memory performance when memory is perturbed by stressful or noxious stimuli either in human or animal studies. Thus, caffeine restores memory performance in sleep-deprived or aged human individuals, a finding replicated in rodent animal models. Likewise, in animal models of Alzheimer's disease (AD), caffeine alleviates memory dysfunction, which is in accordance with the tentative inverse correlation between caffeine intake and the incidence of AD in different (but not all) cohorts. Caffeine also affords beneficial effects in animal models of conditions expected to impair memory performance such as Parkinson's disease, chronic stress, type 2 diabetes, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, early life convulsions, or alcohol-induced amnesia. Thus, caffeine should not be viewed as a cognitive enhancer but instead as a cognitive normalizer. Interestingly, these beneficial effects of caffeine on stress-induced memory disturbance are mimicked by antagonists of adenosine A2A receptors. This prominent role of A2A receptors in preventing memory deterioration is probably related to the synaptic localization of this receptor in limbic areas and its ability to control glutamatergic transmission, especially NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity, and to control apoptosis, brain metabolism, and the burden of neuroinflammation. This opens the real and exciting possibility that caffeine consumption might be a prophylactic strategy and A2A receptor antagonists may be a novel therapeutic option to manage memory dysfunction both in AD and in other chronic neurodegenerative disorders where memory deficits occur.
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PMID:Chronic caffeine consumption prevents memory disturbance in different animal models of memory decline. 2018 43

In rats, cyclo-L-glycyl-L-2-allylproline (NNZ-2591), a diketopiperazine, is neuroprotective after ischemic brain injury and also improves motor function in a rat model of Parkinson's disease. Given nootropic actions of diketopiperazines, we investigated the effects of and potential role for acetylcholine neurotransmission in NNZ-2591 on spatial memory after scopolamine-induced amnesia in rats. Adult male Wistar rats were assigned to four groups: saline/water; saline/NNZ-2591; scopolamine/water and scopolamine/NNZ-2591. Morris Water Maze (MWM) tasks were used to determine spatial learning and memory. Thirty minutes prior to each of four daily acquisition trials, rats were intraperitoneally injected with either scopolamine (0.5 mg/kg) or saline. Either NNZ-2591 (30 mg/kg) or water was administered orally (gavages) 10 min after the injection. Immediately after completion of the day 4 acquisition trial a spatial probe trial was performed. The brains were then collected for immunohistochemical analysis. Scopolamine impaired spatial learning and memory compared to saline treated group, particularly in the day 1 acquisition trial. NNZ-2591 did not reverse this deficit, however it significantly improved memory retention by showing more time spent in the correct quadrant. NNZ-2591 also counteracted the scopolamine-induced up-regulation of choline-acetyltransferase positive neurons in the striatum and similarly counteracted the increased synaptophysin density in the hippocampus. Furthermore, a scopolamine-independent antagonistic effect on muscarinic M2 acetylcholine receptors was found after NNZ-2591 treatment, supporting its modulation of acetylcholine neurotransmission. The data suggest that NNZ-2591 prevents scopolamine-induced acute impairment in memory and modulation of acetylcholine neurotransmission may be the mode of action underlying the memory improvement.
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PMID:NNZ-2591, a novel diketopiperazine, prevented scopolamine-induced acute memory impairment in the adult rat. 2018 67

Parasomnias are sleep-related abnormal behaviors. They are frequent and overlooked causes of nocturnal disruptive behavior in the elderly, especially when patients are cognitively impaired. Confusion and violence can result in sleep disruption, injuries for the patients or their bed partners, caregivers distress, and they can be a motive for institutionalization. Parasomnias include the NonREM sleep disorders of arousal (sleepwalking, sleep terrors, confusional arousals and sleep-related eating disorder), the REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) and more rarely the parasomnia overlap syndrome, which associates both NREM and REM parasomnias. Patients with NREM sleep parasomnias are confused, eyes open, with a glazed look during their nocturnal behaviors, and they have a post-episode amnesia. They shout and bolt from the bed (night terrors), look about in a confused manner, walk and speak (sleepwalking), and eat peculiar or inedible food (sleep-related eating disorders). These behaviors, which are frequent in young adults, may be triggered by short-half live hypnotics in elderly. During the parasomnia, the brain is partially awake (enough to perform complex motor and verbal action), and partially asleep (without conscious awareness or responsibility). RBD is characterized by a loss of the normal muscle atonia that accompanies REM sleep. Patients have excessive motor activity such as punching, kicking, or crying out in association with dream content. RBD are frequent in Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies and may precede the cognitive or motor symptoms of these diseases by 5 to 10 years. RBD can also be promoted by antidepressants. When combined with thorough clinical interviews, the video-polysomnography is a powerful tool, especially for discriminating the parasomnia from nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy, sleep apneas and periodic leg movements. Ensuring safety and withdrawing deleterious treatments are useful in patients with violent activities, potential injurious or bothersome to other household members. Clonazepam and melatonin (3-12 mg) are highly effective for treating RBD.
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PMID:[Disruptive nocturnal behavior in elderly subjects: could it be a parasomnia?]. 2052 41

Building on our previous neurocomputational models of basal ganglia and hippocampal region function (and their modulation by dopamine and acetylcholine, respectively), we show here how an integration of these models can inform our understanding of the interaction between the basal ganglia and hippocampal region in associative learning and transfer generalization across various patient populations. As a common test bed for exploring interactions between these brain regions and neuromodulators, we focus on the acquired equivalence task, an associative learning paradigm in which stimuli that have been associated with the same outcome acquire a functional similarity such that subsequent generalization between these stimuli increases. This task has been used to test cognitive dysfunction in various patient populations with damages to the hippocampal region and basal ganglia, including studies of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), schizophrenia, basal forebrain amnesia, and hippocampal atrophy. Simulation results show that damage to the hippocampal region-as in patients with hippocampal atrophy (HA), hypoxia, mild Alzheimer's (AD), or schizophrenia-leads to intact associative learning but impaired transfer generalization performance. Moreover, the model demonstrates how PD and anterior communicating artery (ACoA) aneurysm-two very different brain disorders that affect different neural mechanisms-can have similar effects on acquired equivalence performance. In particular, the model shows that simulating a loss of dopamine function in the basal ganglia module (as in PD) leads to slow acquisition learning but intact transfer generalization. Similarly, the model shows that simulating the loss of acetylcholine in the hippocampal region (as in ACoA aneurysm) also results in slower acquisition learning. We argue from this that changes in associative learning of stimulus-action pathways (in the basal ganglia) or changes in the learning of stimulus representations (in the hippocampal region) can have similar functional effects.
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PMID:A neural model of hippocampal-striatal interactions in associative learning and transfer generalization in various neurological and psychiatric patients. 2072 58

Sleepwalking (SW) corresponds to a complex sleep-associated behavior that includes locomotion, mental confusion, and amnesia. SW is present in about 10% of children and 2-3% of adults. In a retrospective series of 165 patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), we found adult-onset ("de novo") SW "de novo" in six (4%) of them. The aim of this study was to assess prospectively and systematically the frequency and characteristics of SW in PD patients. A questionnaire including items on sleep quality, sleep disorders, and specifically also SW and REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), PD characteristics and severity, was sent to the members of the national PD patients organization in Switzerland. In the study, 36/417 patients (9%) reported SW, of which 22 (5%) had adult-onset SW. Patients with SW had significantly longer disease duration (p = 0.035), they reported more often hallucinations (p = 0.004) and nightmares (p = 0.003), and they had higher scores, suggestive for RBD in a validated questionnaire (p = 0.001). Patients with SW were also sleepier (trend to a higher Epworth Sleepiness Scale score, p = 0.055). Our data suggest that SW in PD patients is (1) more common than in the general population, and (2) is associated with RBD, nightmares, and hallucinations. Further studies including polysomnographic recordings are needed to confirm the results of this questionnaire-based analysis, to understand the relationship between SW and other nighttime wandering behaviors in PD, and to clarify the underlying mechanisms.
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PMID:Sleepwalking in Parkinson's disease: a questionnaire-based survey. 2129 74

The olfactory mucosa, located in the nasal cavity, is in charge of detecting odours. It is also the only nervous tissue that is exposed to the external environment and easily accessible in every living individual. As a result, this tissue is unique for anyone aiming to identify molecular anomalies in the pathological brain or isolate adult stem cells for cell therapy. Molecular abnormalities in brain diseases are often studied using nervous tissue samples collected post-mortem. However, this material has numerous limitations. In contrast, the olfactory mucosa is readily accessible and can be biopsied safely without any loss of sense of smell(1). Accordingly, the olfactory mucosa provides an "open window" in the adult human through which one can study developmental (e.g. autism, schizophrenia)(2-4) or neurodegenerative (e.g. Parkinson, Alzheimer) diseases(4,5). Olfactory mucosa can be used for either comparative molecular studies(4,6) or in vitro experiments on neurogenesis(3,7). The olfactory epithelium is also a nervous tissue that produces new neurons every day to replace those that are damaged by pollution, bacterial of viral infections. This permanent neurogenesis is sustained by progenitors but also stem cells residing within both compartments of the mucosa, namely the neuroepithelium and the underlying lamina propria(8-10). We recently developed a method to purify the adult stem cells located in the lamina propria and, after having demonstrated that they are closely related to bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSC), we named them olfactory ecto-mesenchymal stem cells (OE-MSC)(11). Interestingly, when compared to BM-MSCs, OE-MSCs display a high proliferation rate, an elevated clonogenicity and an inclination to differentiate into neural cells. We took advantage of these characteristics to perform studies dedicated to unveil new candidate genes in schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease(4). We and others have also shown that OE-MSCs are promising candidates for cell therapy, after a spinal cord trauma(12,13), a cochlear damage(14) or in an animal models of Parkinson's disease(15) or amnesia(16). In this study, we present methods to biopsy olfactory mucosa in rats and humans. After collection, the lamina propria is enzymatically separated from the epithelium and stem cells are purified using an enzymatic or a non-enzymatic method. Purified olfactory stem cells can then be either grown in large numbers and banked in liquid nitrogen or induced to form spheres or differentiated into neural cells. These stem cells can also be used for comparative omics (genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, proteomic) studies.
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PMID:Isolating nasal olfactory stem cells from rodents or humans. 2187 29

Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) developed from mixtures of solid lipid and spatially incompatible liquid lipid by solvent diffusion method. This new type of lipid nanoparticles offers the advantage of improved drug loading capacity and release properties. In this study, Glyceryl distearate and Glyceryl behenate were chosen as solid lipid and Glyceryl triacetate used as liquid lipid. Ubidecarenone used as model drug was incorporated into the NLC. The influences of different type of solid lipid and liquid lipid concentration on physiochemical properties of the NLC were characterized. As a result, the drug encapsulation efficiencies were improved by adding the liquid lipid into the solid lipid of nanoparticles. NLC had higher encapsulation efficiency and drug release. In addition, in vivo study showed that the antioxidant activity of the Ubidecarenone (Co. Q10 NLC) was more effective than the Ubidecarenone (Coenzyme Q10) solution form on DPPH scavenging, anti-lipid peroxidation, lowers the effect of amnesia induced by scopolamine and increased bioavailability observed in Cmax, Tmax, and AUC. These results indicated that nanostructured lipid formulation of Ubiquinone (Coenzyme Q10) has more antioxidant activity than that of solution form and it can be used to reduce the oxidative stress and to increase the antioxidant enzyme activity in many neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease etc.
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PMID:Formulation and characterization of nanostructured lipid carrier of ubiquinone (Coenzyme Q10). 2362 Oct 1


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