The cortical signature of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The aim of this study was to explore the pattern of regional cortical thickness in patients with non-familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and to investigate whether cortical thinning is associated with disease progression rate. Cortical thickness analysis was performed in 44 ALS patients and 26 healthy controls. Group differences in cortical thickness and the age-by-group effects were assessed using vertex-by-vertex and multivariate linear models. The discriminatory ability of MRI variables in distinguishing patients from controls was estimated using the Concordance Statistics (C-statistic) within logistic regression analyses. Correlations between cortical thickness measures and disease progression rate were tested using the Pearson coefficient. Relative to controls, ALS patients showed a bilateral cortical thinning of the primary motor, prefrontal and ventral frontal cortices, cingulate gyrus, insula, superior and inferior temporal and parietal regions, and medial and lateral occipital areas. There was a significant age-by-group effect in the sensorimotor cortices bilaterally, suggesting a stronger association between age and cortical thinning in ALS patients compared to controls. The mean cortical thickness of the sensorimotor cortices distinguished patients with ALS from controls (C-statistic ≥ 0.74). Cortical thinning of the left sensorimotor cortices was related to a faster clinical progression (r = -0.33, p = 0.03). Cortical thickness measurements allowed the detection and quantification of motor and extramotor involvement in patients with ALS. Cortical thinning of the precentral gyrus might offer a marker of upper motor neuron involvement and disease progression

Development of a microcantilever-based immunosensing method for mycotoxin detection

Mycotoxins, such as aflatoxins and ochratoxin A, are presently considered as the most important chronic dietary risk factor, more than food additives or pesticide residues. Therefore, the serious health and economic consequences of mycotoxin contamination have created the need for rapid, sensitive, and reliable techniques to detect such dangerous molecules within foodstuffs. We here report on the development of an innovative immunosensing method for mycotoxin detection, based on antibody-immobilized microcantilever resonators, a promising label free biosensing technique. A considerable part of the work is devoted to show the effect on microcantilever resonance frequency of the composition of the incubation buffer, as well as of the washing and drying procedure. We show the feasibility of using microcantilever resonator arrays to effectively identify total aflatoxins and ochratoxin A, at low concentrations (3 ng/mL and less than 6 ng/mL, respectively), with relatively low uncertainty (about 10%) and good reproducibility for the same target concentration. Furthermore, the developed immunosensing method shows a limited cross-reactivity to different mycotoxins, paving the way to a highly specific technique, able to identify different mycotoxins in the sample. To our knowledge, this work represents the first example in literature of successfully immunodetection of low concentrations of multiple mycotoxins by microcantilever resonator arrays

Vertex-by-vertex analysis: regions of significantly thinner cortex in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis compared with healthy controls represented on an averaged brain map.

<p>Color bar represents t values (p<0.05, uncorrected for multiple comparisons).</p

Left hemisphere: regions with different mean cortical thickness in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis compared with healthy controls.

<p>Values are mean thickness ± standard deviation (mm) or percent difference.</p>*<p>p values refer to multivariate liner models, adjusting for subject's age (False-Discovery rate corrected).</p

Right hemisphere: regions with different mean cortical thickness in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis compared with healthy controls.

<p>Values are mean thickness ± standard deviation (mm) or percent difference.</p>*<p>p values refer to multivariate liner models, adjusting for subject's age (False-Discovery rate corrected).</p

Sensorimotor, cognitive-frontal and cognitive-temporal mask mean cortical thickness in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis compared with healthy controls.

<p>Values are mean thickness ± standard deviation (mm) or percent difference.</p>*<p>p values refer to multivariate liner models, adjusting for subject's age (False-Discovery rate corrected).</p><p>Abbreviations: ALS = amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; C index = Concordance index.</p