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)

Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome (GTS) is a chronic, familial neuropsychiatric disorder of unknown etiology characterized clinically by the occurrence of motor and vocal tics and by the presence of a variety of neurobehavioral and neurocognitive abnormalities including hyperactivity, self-multilatory behavior, obsessive-compulsive behavior, learning disabilities, and conduct disorder. On the basis of neuropsychological assessments it has been suggested that GTS is associated with greater right than left hemispheric dysfunction which accounts for decrements in visuospatial, visuoconstructional and visuomotor skills in these patients. Recent case studies have demonstrated that extracranial application of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in the picotesla (pT) range intensity improves visuospatial and visuoperceptive functions in patients with neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. I now present a 6 1/2 year old boy with GTS in whom this treatment modality produced, in addition to symptomatic behavioral improvement, also improvement in visuoconstructional and visuomotor skills as evidenced on various drawing tasks particularly copy of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure, a task which is especially vulnerable to right hemispheric functions. These findings suggest that pT range EMFs may be useful for the treatment of GTS and related disorders and also reverse some of the cognitive impairments associated with the disease which are related to right hemispheric dysfunction and which contribute to learning disabilities in these patients.
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PMID:Improvement of right hemispheric functions in a child with Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome by weak electromagnetic fields. 762 11

There is a now a substantial body of evidence that suggests the new antipsychotic agent, risperidone, may be safe and effective for treating psychotic, affective or behavioural symptoms associated with various disorders other than schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder or schizo-affective disorder. These conditions include bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette's syndrome, dementia, Lewy body disease, mental retardation, Parkinson's disease, idiopathic segmental dystonia and organic catatonia. Although much of the data is anecdotal or in the form of open studies, there is now emerging a small number of well controlled investigations supporting efficacy for mania, dementia, behavioural disturbance in mental retardation and conduct disorder. Conventional antipsychotics have long been used, either in a primary capacity or as an adjunct to treat these disorders; however, they have limited benefit, pose significant risks of extrapyramidal side-effects, and may cause the potentially life-threatening neuroleptic malignant syndrome. In contrast, risperidone at the recommended low doses may be efficacious and pose reduced risk of motor side-effects. This article reviews the evidence that risperidone may be an effective new treatment for disorders other than schizophrenia.
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PMID:Does risperidone have a place in the treatment of nonschizophrenic patients? 1119 55

Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with low birth weight, increased risk of stillbirth, conduct disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and neurocognitive deficits. Ventral tegmental area dopamine (DA) neurons in the mesocorticolimbic pathway were suggested to play a critical role in these pathological mechanisms induced by nicotine. Nicotine-mediated changes in genetic expression during pregnancy are of great interest for current researchers. We used patch clamp methods to identify and harvest DA and non-DA neurons separately and assayed them using oligonucleotide arrays to elucidate the alterations in gene expressions in these cells upon gestational nicotine exposure. Microarray analysis identified a set of 135 genes as significantly differentially expressed between DA and non-DA neurons. Some of the genes were found to be related to neurological disease pathways, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Significantly up-/down-regulated genes found in DA neurons were mostly related to G-protein-coupled protein receptor signaling and developmental processes. These alterations in gene expressions may explain, partially at least, the possible pathological mechanisms for the diseases induced by maternal smoking.
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PMID:Gene expression profiling of midbrain dopamine neurons upon gestational nicotine exposure. 2725 53

Schizophrenia is a severe debilitating psychiatric disorder, with a typical onset in adolescence or early adulthood. This condition is characterized by heterogeneous symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, disorganized behaviour, affective flattening, and social isolation) and a life-time prevalence of 0.5-1.2%. In spite of the efforts to uncover the etiology of the disorder, its pathogenesis and neurobiological background are poorly understood. Given the high heritability in schizophrenia, genetic research remains an important area of focus. Besides the common variations of low penetrance - single nucleotid polymorphisms (SNPs) -, rare variants, mainly copy number variations (CNVs) play a role in the genetic architecture of the disorder. The most frequent CNV associated with schizophrenia is the hemizygous deletion of the 22q11.2 region. According to previous research this genetic variant occurs in 1% of the patients and conversely, 25% of the carriers of the 22q11.2 microdeletion will develop schizophrenia. The 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22Q11DS, velocardiofacial (VCFS) syndrome, DiGeorge-syndrome) is usually a childhood diagnosis. Its prevalence is 1:2000-4000 considering all births. Patients can demonstrate heart developmental disorders, craniofacial (elongated face, hypertelorism), immunological (thymus-hypoplasia), endocrinological (hypocalcaemia) abnormalities, and neurodevelopmental alterations, but only a proportion will have these abnormalities due to incomplete penetrance. The variable symptoms complicate the recognition of the syndrome in the day to day medical practice. 25% of the known 22Q11DS patients develop schizophrenia but the risk of neuropsychiatric problems, like autism, ADHD and childhood conduct disorder is also increased, while early onset Parkinson's disease in also more frequent in adults. The schizophrenia phenotype is not distinguishable at the moment in patients with or without the 22q11 deletion. But emerging evidence suggests that early onset Parkinson's disease is more frequent in 22Q11DS and the effects of clozapine treatment could be different in schizophrenia with 22Q11DS. The question arises what is the incidence rate of the 22q11.2 microdeletion among our Hungarian DNA samples with schizophrenia. To answer the question, we utilized a new method used in routine genetic diagnostics, multiplex ligation-based probe amplification (MLPA). Although we genotyped the DNA of 315 Hungarian schizophrenia patients, we found no 22Q11DS in this cohort. The findings are discussed in terms of basic research and their translation into everyday clinical practice.
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PMID:[An attempt to identify 22q11.2 microdeletions in samples of the Hungarian schizophrenia DNA bank by multiplex ligation-based probe amplification (MLPA): literature review, methodology and results]. 2825 64