Oligodendrocyte-myelin glycoprotein (OMgp) is an inhibitor of neurite outgrowth

A protein fraction purified from bovine brain myelin, previously called arretin because of its ability to inhibit neurite outgrowth, has been identified as consisting predominantly of oligodendrocyte-myelin glycoprotein (OMgp). We show that it is a potent inhibitor of neurite outgrowth from rat cerebellar granule and hippocampal cells; from dorsal root ganglion explants in which growth cone collapse was observed; from rat retinal ganglion neurons; and from NG108 and PC12 cells. OMgp purified by a different procedure from both mouse and human myelin behaves identically in all bioassays tested.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66067/1/j.1471-4159.2002.01146.x.pd

Economic vs. juristic thinking in Carl Menger’s principles of economics

Austrian Economic School is increasingly being treated as one of the most significant and ever more influential bodies of ideas affecting the contemporary economic science. It is well known that Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School, was a lawyer by education. The paper is devoted to the degree to which his legal education influenced his economic theorizing. After a close examination of the Menger’s conceptual apparatus and the epistemological ramifications of the key notions underlying his thinking, the paper concludes that the juristic background of the far-reaching theoretical contributions contained in Menger’s Principles was truly decisive. That holds true despite the fact that Menger only exceptionally utilized the juristic vocabulary. The key ingredients of his theoretical creation? such as the individual autonomy, the coincidence of the wills in concluding a contract the effective protection of property and making transactions based on the individual motivation to further one’s own interests to the utmost? are clearly inspired and in many ways influenced by private law, particularly the doctrines underlying the Roman Law and the Austrian Civil Code

Survey on retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in Italy

This study aims to investigate the incidence and the relative risk factors of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and posterior-ROP (P-ROP): ROP in Zone I and posterior Zone II, as well as to analyze the occurrence of surgical treatment of ROP and to evaluate the short term outcome of the disease in Italy

Anti-Nogo-A Immunotherapy Does Not Alter Hippocampal Neurogenesis after Stroke in Adult Rats

Ischemic stroke is a leading cause of adult disability, including cognitive impairment. Our laboratory has previously shown that treatment with function-blocking antibodies against the neurite growth inhibitory protein Nogo-A promotes functional recovery after stroke in adult and aged rats, including enhancing spatial memory performance, for which the hippocampus is critically important. Since spatial memory has been linked to hippocampal neurogenesis, we investigated whether anti-Nogo-A treatment increases hippocampal neurogenesis after stroke. Adult rats were subject to permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion followed 1 week later by 2 weeks of antibody treatment. Cellular proliferation in the dentate gyrus was quantified at the end of treatment, and the number of newborn neurons was determined at 8 weeks post-stroke. Treatment with both anti-Nogo-A and control antibodies stimulated the accumulation of new microglia/macrophages in the dentate granule cell layer, but neither treatment increased cellular proliferation or the number of newborn neurons above stroke-only levels. These results suggest that anti-Nogo-A immunotherapy does not increase post-stroke hippocampal neurogenesis

Nogo-A Expression in the Brain of Mice with Cerebral Malaria

Cerebral malaria (CM) is associated with a high rate of transient or persistent neurological sequelae. Nogo-A, a protein that is highly expressed in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), is involved in neuronal regeneration and synaptic plasticity in the injured CNS. The current study investigates the role of Nogo-A in the course of experimental CM. C57BL/6J mice were infected with Plasmodium berghei ANKA blood stages. Brain homogenates of mice with different clinical severity levels of CM, infected animals without CM and control animals were analyzed for Nogo-A up-regulation by Western blotting and immunohistochemistry. Brain regions with Nogo-A upregulation were evaluated by transmission electron microscopy. Densitometric analysis of Western blots yielded a statistically significant upregulation of Nogo-A in mice showing moderate to severe CM. The number of neurons and oligodendrocytes positive for Nogo-A did not differ significantly between the studied groups. However, mice with severe CM showed a significantly higher number of cells with intense Nogo-A staining in the brain stem. In this region ultrastructural alterations of the ER were regularly observed. Nogo-A is upregulated during the early course of experimental CM. In the brain stem of severely affected animals increased Nogo-A expression and ultrastructural changes of the ER were observed. These data indicate a role of Nogo-A in neuronal stress response during experimental CM

Orbital/ocular inflammatory involvement in VEXAS syndrome: Data from the international AIDA network VEXAS registry

VEXAS syndrome is a recently described monogenic autoinflammatory disease capable of manifesting itself with a wide array of organs and tissues involvement. Orbital/ocular inflammatory manifestations are frequently described in VEXAS patients. The objective of this study is to further describe orbital/ocular conditions in VEXAS syndrome while investigating potential associations with other disease manifestations. In the present study, twenty-seven out of 59 (45.8 %) VEXAS patients showed an inflammatory orbital/ocular involvement during their clinical history. The most frequent orbital/ocular affections were represented by periorbital edema in 8 (13.6 %) cases, episcleritis in 5 (8.5 %) patients, scleritis in 5 (8.5 %) cases, uveitis in 4 (6.8 %) cases, conjunctivitis in 4 (6.8 %) cases, blepharitis in 3 (5.1 %) cases, orbital myositis in 2 (3.4 %) cases. A diagnosis of systemic immune-mediated disease was observed in 15 (55.6 %) cases, with relapsing polychondritis diagnosed in 12 patients. A significant association was observed between relapsing polychondritis and orbital/ocular involvement in VEXAS syndrome (Relative Risk: 2.37, 95 % C.I. 1.03–5.46, p = 0.048). Six deaths were observed in the whole cohort of patients after a median disease duration of 1.2 (IQR=5.35) years, 5 (83.3 %) of which showed orbital/ocular inflammatory involvement. In conclusion, this study confirms that orbital/ocular inflammatory involvement is a common finding in VEXAS patients, especially when relapsing polychondritis is diagnosed. This makes ophthalmologists a key figure in the diagnostic process of VEXAS syndrome. The high frequency of deaths observed in this study seems to suggest that patients with orbital/ocular involvement may require increased attention and more careful follow-up

HIV-1 Matrix Dependent Membrane Targeting Is Regulated by Gag mRNA Trafficking

Retroviral Gag polyproteins are necessary and sufficient for virus budding. Productive HIV-1 Gag assembly takes place at the plasma membrane. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which thousands of Gag molecules are targeted to the plasma membrane. Using a bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assay, we recently reported that the cellular sites and efficiency of HIV-1 Gag assembly depend on the precise pathway of Gag mRNA export from the nucleus, known to be mediated by Rev. Here we describe an assembly deficiency in human cells for HIV Gag whose expression depends on hepatitis B virus (HBV) post-transcriptional regulatory element (PRE) mediated-mRNA nuclear export. PRE-dependent HIV Gag expressed well in human cells, but assembled with slower kinetics, accumulated intracellularly, and failed to associate with a lipid raft compartment where the wild-type Rev-dependent HIV-1 Gag efficiently assembles. Surprisingly, assembly and budding of PRE-dependent HIV Gag in human cells could be rescued in trans by co-expression of Rev-dependent Gag that provides correct membrane targeting signals, or in cis by replacing HIV matrix (MA) with other membrane targeting domains. Taken together, our results demonstrate deficient membrane targeting of PRE-dependent HIV-1 Gag and suggest that HIV MA function is regulated by the trafficking pathway of the encoding mRNA