Identification of sixteen novel candidate genes for late onset Parkinson’s disease

Background Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder affecting 1–5% of the general population for which neither effective cure nor early diagnostic tools are available that could tackle the pathology in the early phase. Here we report a multi-stage procedure to identify candidate genes likely involved in the etiopathogenesis of PD. Methods The study includes a discovery stage based on the analysis of whole exome data from 26 dominant late onset PD families, a validation analysis performed on 1542 independent PD patients and 706 controls from different cohorts and the assessment of polygenic variants load in the Italian cohort (394 unrelated patients and 203 controls). Results Family-based approach identified 28 disrupting variants in 26 candidate genes for PD including PARK2, PINK1, DJ-1(PARK7), LRRK2, HTRA2, FBXO7, EIF4G1, DNAJC6, DNAJC13, SNCAIP, AIMP2, CHMP1A, GIPC1, HMOX2, HSPA8, IMMT, KIF21B, KIF24, MAN2C1, RHOT2, SLC25A39, SPTBN1, TMEM175, TOMM22, TVP23A and ZSCAN21. Sixteen of them have not been associated to PD before, were expressed in mesencephalon and were involved in pathways potentially deregulated in PD. Mutation analysis in independent cohorts disclosed a significant excess of highly deleterious variants in cases (p = 0.0001), supporting their role in PD. Moreover, we demonstrated that the co-inheritance of multiple rare variants (≥ 2) in the 26 genes may predict PD occurrence in about 20% of patients, both familial and sporadic cases, with high specificity (> 93%; p = 4.4 × 10− 5). Moreover, our data highlight the fact that the genetic landmarks of late onset PD does not systematically differ between sporadic and familial forms, especially in the case of small nuclear families and underline the importance of rare variants in the genetics of sporadic PD. Furthermore, patients carrying multiple rare variants showed higher risk of manifesting dyskinesia induced by levodopa treatment. Conclusions Besides confirming the extreme genetic heterogeneity of PD, these data provide novel insights into the genetic of the disease and may be relevant for its prediction, diagnosis and treatment

Increased Angiogenesis and Lymphangiogenesis in Metastatic Sentinel Lymph Nodes Is Associated With Nonsentinel Lymph Node Involvement and Distant Metastasis in Patients With Melanoma.

Lymph node angio- and lymphangio-genesis have been shown to play an important role in the premetastatic niche of sentinel lymph nodes. In the current study we have investigated the association of angio- and lympangio-genesis related parameters in metastatic sentinel lymph nodes of patients with melanoma with the presence of nonsentinel and distant organ metastasis. Peritumoral and intratumoral relative blood and lymphatic vessel areas (evaluated by Chalkley method), blood and lymphatic microvessel densities, and the rates of blood and lymphatic vessel proliferation were assessed in primary tumors and sentinel lymph node metastasis of 44 patients with melanoma using CD34/Ki-67 and D240/Ki-67 immunohistochemical double staining. Primary melanoma exhibited significantly higher rate of lymphatic proliferation compared with its lymph node metastasis (P < 0.05), while lymph node metastasis showed significantly higher rate of blood vessel proliferation (P < 0.05). Using multivariate logistic regression model, the rate of peritumoral lymphatic proliferation was inversely associated with positive nonsentinel lymph node status (P < 0.05), whereas the rate of intratumoral blood vessel proliferation was associated with distant organ metastasis (P < 0.05). Using multivariate Cox regression analysis, the rate of intratumoral blood vessel proliferation was also inversely associated with overall survival of patients with melanoma (P < 0.05).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

A Polarization-Independent SPR Fiber Sensor

The resonance of surface plasma waves in metallic layers is a strongly polarization-dependent phenomenon by the very nature of the physical effect responsible of that resonance. This implies the necessity of polarization-controlling elements to be added to any operative surface-plasmon-resonance-based sensor. A fully symmetrical, circular-section double deposition of a metallic and a dielectric layer on a uniform-waist tapered optical fiber (SymDL-UWT) permits us to completely eliminate the dependence on polarization of the plasmon excitation, with the corresponding operative advantages and basic theoretical consequences. We depict the fabrication process of these transducers, which is based on the use of a simple and efficient rotating element developed by us, and show the characteristics of the produced devices. No such device has been depicted up to date. As our experimental results show, this kind of devices can be considered a very good option for the development of simple, compact, and efficient chemical and biological sensors