Articles

Mitochondrial dynamic abnormalities in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the most common motor neuron disease characterized by progressive loss of motor neurons in the brainstem and spinal cord. Currently, there is no cure or effective treatme...

Authors: Zhen Jiang, Wenzhang Wang, George Perry, Xiongwei Zhu and Xinglong Wang

Genotype-phenotype relationship in hereditary amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the most common adult-onset motor neuron disease. It is characterized by neuronal loss and degeneration of the upper motor neurons (UMNs) and lower motor neurons (LMNs), ...

Authors: Satoshi Yamashita and Yukio Ando

Update on deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is considered a safe and well tolerated surgical procedure to alleviate Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other movement disorders symptoms along with some psychiatric conditions. Over ...

Authors: Daniel Martinez-Ramirez, Wei Hu, Alberto R. Bona, Michael S. Okun and Aparna Wagle Shukla

Wnt3a protects SH-SY5Y cells against 6-hydroxydopamine toxicity by restoration of mitochondria function

Wnt/β-catenin signal has been reported to exert cytoprotective effects in cellular models of several diseases, including Parkinson’s disease (PD). This study aimed to investigate the neuroprotective effects of...

Authors: Lei Wei, Li Ding, Ming-shu Mo, Ming Lei, Limin Zhang, Kang Chen and Pingyi Xu

Acid-sensing ion channels: potential therapeutic targets for neurologic diseases

Maintaining the physiological pH of interstitial fluid is crucial for normal cellular functions. In disease states, tissue acidosis is a common pathologic change causing abnormal activation of acid-sensing ion...

Authors: Sha Liu, Xiao-Yu Cheng, Fen Wang and Chun-Feng Liu

Posttranslational modifications of α-tubulin in alzheimer disease

In Alzheimer disease (AD), hyperphosphorylation of tau proteins results in microtubule destabilization and cytoskeletal abnormalities. Our prior ultra-morphometric studies documented a clear reduction in micro...

Authors: Fan Zhang, Bo Su, Chunyu Wang, Sandra L. Siedlak, Siddhartha Mondragon-Rodriguez, Hyoung-gon Lee, Xinglong Wang, George Perry and Xiongwei Zhu

The promise of stem cells in the therapy of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a common neurodegenerative disorder associated with gradually to dramatic neuronal death, synaptic loss and dementia, is considered to be one of the most obscure and intractable brain...

Authors: Chunmei Yue and Naihe Jing

Direct reprogramming of induced neural progenitors: a new promising strategy for AD treatment

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a prominent form of dementia, characterized by aggregation of the amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, loss of synapses and neurons, and degeneration of cogni...

Authors: Siqiang Lai, Min Zhang, Dongsheng Xu, Yiying Zhang, Lisha Qiu, Changhai Tian and Jialin Charlie Zheng

Mini review: linkage between α-Synuclein protein and cognition

α-synuclein is a protein that plays important roles in cognitive function in the normal brain, although its exact role is not fully understood. However, current studies reveal that defects in α-synuclein funct...

Authors: Huda Saleh, Ayeh Saleh, Hailan Yao, Jie Cui, Yong Shen and Rena Li

Voxel-based meta-analysis of grey matter changes in Alzheimer’s disease

Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) using structural brain MRI has been widely used for the assessment of impairment in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but previous studies in VBM studies on AD remain inconsistent.

Authors: Wen-Ying Wang, Jin-Tai Yu, Yong Liu, Rui-Hua Yin, Hui-Fu Wang, Jun Wang, Lin Tan, Joaquim Radua and Lan Tan

How to optimize the treatment of early stage Parkinson’s disease

The approach to early Parkinson’s disease denotes the communication of the diagnosis and important decisions, such as when and how to start treatment. Evidence based medicine and guidelines indicate which drug...

Authors: Fabrizio Stocchi, Laura Vacca and Fabiana G Radicati

Treatment of the later stages of Parkinson’s disease – pharmacological approaches now and in the future

The problems associated with the pharmacological treatment of the later stages of Parkinson’s disease (PD) remain those seen over many years. These centre on a loss of drug effect (‘wearing off’) with disease ...

Authors: Peter Jenner

Characteristics of language impairment in Parkinson’s disease and its influencing factors

Language impairment is relatively common in Parkinson’s disease (PD), but not all PD patients are susceptible to language problems. In this study, we identified among a sample of PD patients those pre-disposed...

Authors: Lin Liu, Xiao-Guang Luo, Chui-Liang Dy, Yan Ren, Yu Feng, Hong-Mei Yu, Hong Shang and Zhi-Yi He

Meta-analyses on prevalence of selected Parkinson’s nonmotor symptoms before and after diagnosis

Nonmotor symptoms are common among patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and some may precede disease diagnosis.

Authors: Honglei Chen, Edward J Zhao, Wen Zhang, Yi Lu, Rui Liu, Xuemei Huang, Anna J Ciesielski-Jones, Michele A Justice, Deborah S Cousins and Shyamal Peddada

Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 1 making molecular inroads into the differential vulnerability of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neuron subtypes in Parkinson’s disease

A preferential dysfunction/loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) accounts for the main motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD), the most common degenerative movement di...

Authors: Huaibin Cai, Guoxiang Liu, Lixin Sun and Jinhui Ding

Prevalence of wearing-off and dyskinesia among the patients with Parkinson’s disease on levodopa therapy: a multi-center registry survey in mainland China

Chronic levodopa (L-dopa) treatment in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is often associated with the development of motor complications, but the corresponding epidemiological data is rare in Chinese PD patients. The p...

Authors: Wei Chen, Qin Xiao, Ming Shao, Tao Feng, Wei-Guo Liu, Xiao-Guang Luo, Xiao-Chun Chen, An-Mu Xie, Chun-Feng Liu, Zhen-Guo Liu, Yi-Ming Liu, Jian Wang and Sheng-Di Chen

Modulation of tau phosphorylation by environmental copper

The transition metal copper enhances amyloid β aggregation and neurotoxicity, and in models of concomitant amyloid and tau pathology, copper also promotes tau aggregation. Since it is not clear if the effects ...

Authors: Kellen Voss, Christopher Harris, Martina Ralle, Megan Duffy, Charles Murchison and Joseph F Quinn

Dual destructive and protective roles of adaptive immunity in neurodegenerative disorders

Inappropriate T cell responses in the central nervous system (CNS) affect the pathogenesis of a broad range of neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders that include, but are not limited to, multiple s...

Authors: Kristi M Anderson, Katherine E Olson, Katherine A Estes, Ken Flanagan, Howard E Gendelman and R Lee Mosley

Proteomics of protein post-translational modifications implicated in neurodegeneration

Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics has developed into a battery of approaches that is exceedingly adept at identifying with high mass accuracy and precision any of the following: oxidative damage to prote...

Authors: Ru-Jing Ren, Eric B Dammer, Gang Wang, Nicholas T Seyfried and Allan I Levey

Tremor and clinical fluctuation are related to sleep disorders in Chinese patients with Parkinson’s disease

To study the relationship between sleep disturbances and symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Authors: Hongyan Zhou, Cunzhou Shen, Jie Chen, Hao Qian, Yifan Zheng, Yanmei Liu, Wenbiao Xian, Zhong Pei and Ling Chen

Retraction Note: Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young African American boys: a reanalysis of CDC data

Authors: Brian S Hooker

Chaperone-mediated autophagy: roles in neurodegeneration

Chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) selectively delivers cytosolic proteins with an exposed CMA-targeting motif to lysosomes for degradation and plays an important role in protein quality control and cellular h...

Authors: Gang Wang and Zixu Mao

Recent advances in transthyretin amyloidosis therapy

Mutant (MT) forms of transthyretin (TTR) cause the most common type of autosomal-dominant hereditary systemic amyloidosis—familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (FAP). Until 20 years ago, FAP was thought to be an...

Authors: Mitsuharu Ueda and Yukio Ando

Expression of concern: measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young African American boys: a reanalysis of CDC data

The Publisher of this article [1] has serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions because of possible undeclared competing interests of the author and peer reviewers. The matter is undergoing invest...

Authors:

Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data

A significant number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder suffer a loss of previously-acquired skills, suggesting neurodegeneration or a type of progressive encephalopathy with an etiological ba...

Authors: Brian S Hooker

In silico analysis of regulatory networks underlines the role of miR-10b-5p and its target BDNF in huntington’s disease

Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play various roles during central nervous system development. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of ncRNAs that exert their function together with argonaute proteins by post-transcriptiona...

Authors: Sören Müller

Comparison of cognitive and UHDRS measures in monitoring disease progression in Huntington’s disease: a 12-month longitudinal study

Progressive cognitive decline is a feature of Huntington’s disease (HD), an inherited neurodegenerative movement disorder. Comprehensive neuropsychological testing is the ‘gold standard’ to establish cognitive...

Authors: Eng A Toh, Michael R MacAskill, John C Dalrymple-Alford, Daniel J Myall, Leslie Livingston, Sandy AD Macleod and Tim J Anderson

Hemiballism-hemichorea induced by ketotic hyperglycemia: case report with PET study and review of the literature

Hemiballism-hemichorea (HB-HC) is commonly used to describe the basal ganglion dysfunction in non-ketotic hyperglycemic elderly patients. Here we report two elderly female patients with acute onset of involunt...

Authors: Yuyan Tan, Xiaoyu Xin, Qin Xiao, Shengdi Chen, Li Cao and Huidong Tang

Cardiovascular risk factors and frontotemporal dementia: a case–control study

Cardiovascular risk factors (CRF) were widely described as related to dementia. There are very few studies regarding this association in FTD. The objective of the study was to compare the frequency of CRF in o...

Authors: Angel Golimstok, Nuria Cámpora, Juan I Rojas, María C Fernandez, Cristina Elizondo, Enrique Soriano and Edgardo Cristiano

Randomized controlled trials in frontotemporal dementia: cognitive and behavioral outcomes

Progress has been made in understanding the genetics and molecular biology of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Targets for intervention have been identified, therapies are being developed, and clinical trials ar...

Authors: Justin B Miller, Sarah J Banks, Gabriel C Léger and Jeffrey L Cummings

The efficacy and safety of pramipexole ER versus IR in Chinese patients with Parkinson’s disease: a randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, parallel-group study

To evaluate the non-inferiority of pramipexole extended-release (ER) versus immediate-release (IR) in Chinese patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) in a double-blind, randomized, parallel-group study.

Authors: Ying Wang, Shenggang Sun, Suiqiang Zhu, Chunfeng Liu, Yiming Liu, Qing Di, Huifang Shang, Yan Ren, Changhong Lu, Mark Forrest Gordon, Nolwenn Juhel and Shengdi Chen

Considerations on the role of environmental toxins in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease pathophysiology

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by a progressive dysfunction of the nervous system. Often associated with atrophy of the affected central or peripheral nervous structures, they include diseases su...

Authors: Francisco Pan-Montojo and Heinz Reichmann

Role of early life exposure and environment on neurodegeneration: implications on brain disorders

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and retinal degeneration have been studied extensively and varying molecular mechanism...

Authors: Shweta Modgil, Debomoy K Lahiri, Vijay L Sharma and Akshay Anand

Chronic treatment with anesthetic propofol attenuates β-amyloid protein levels in brain tissues of aged mice

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. At the present time, however, AD still lacks effective treatments. Our recent studies showed that chronic treatment with anesthetic propofol attenu...

Authors: Yiying Zhang, Haijun Shao, Yuanlin Dong, Celeste A Swain, Buwei Yu, Weiming Xia and Zhongcong Xie

Epigenetic modifications of chronic hypoxia-mediated neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder affecting the elderly people. AD is characterized by progressive and gradual decline in cognitive function and memory loss. While familial...

Authors: Hui Liu and Weidong Le

In vivo tracking of tau pathology using positron emission tomography (PET) molecular imaging in small animals

Hyperphosphorylation of the tau protein leading to the formation of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) is a common feature in a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases known as tauopathies, which include Alzheime...

Authors: Eduardo Rigon Zimmer, Antoine Leuzy, Venkat Bhat, Serge Gauthier and Pedro Rosa-Neto

The effects of exercise on cognition in Parkinson’s disease: a systematic review

Cognitive impairments are highly prevalent in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and can substantially affect a patient’s quality of life. These impairments remain difficult to manage with current clinical therapies, bu...

Authors: Danielle K Murray, Matthew A Sacheli, Janice J Eng and A Jon Stoessl

Annual acknowledgement of manuscript reviewers

The editors of Translational Neurodegeneration would like to thank all our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in Volume 2 (2013).

Authors: Shengdi Chen

Regulation of Myelination in the Central Nervous System by Nuclear Lamin B1 and Non-coding RNAs

Adult-onset autosomal dominant leukodystrophy (ADLD) is a progressive and fatal hereditary demyelination disorder characterized initially by autonomic dysfunction and loss of myelin in the central nervous syst...

Authors: Shu-Ting Lin, Mary Y Heng, Louis J Ptáček and Ying-Hui Fu

Deep brain stimulation for dystonia

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective surgical treatment for medication-refractory movement disorders, and has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for treatment of dystonia. ...

Authors: Wei Hu and Matt Stead

Clinical features of dementia with lewy bodies in 35 Chinese patients

To investigate the clinical features of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) in a Chinese population.

Authors: Ding Han, Qiong Wang, Zhongbao Gao, Tong Chen and Zhenfu Wang

A two-phase study evaluating the relationship between Thimerosal-containing vaccine administration and the risk for an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in the United States

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined by standardized criteria of qualitative impairments in social interaction, qualitative impairments in communication, and restricted and stereotyped patterns of behavio...

Authors: David A Geier, Brian S Hooker, Janet K Kern, Paul G King, Lisa K Sykes and Mark R Geier

Effects of 17-allylamino-17-demethoxygeldanamycin (17-AAG) in transgenic mouse models of frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common dementia, is characterized by potentially neurotoxic aggregation of Aβ peptide and tau protein, and their deposition as amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NF...

Authors: Shuk Wai Ho, Yuk Tung Chanel Tsui, Ting Ting Wong, Stanley Kwok-Kuen Cheung, William B Goggins, Lau Ming Yi, Kwok Kin Cheng and Larry Baum

Asiaticoside, a trisaccaride triterpene induces biochemical and molecular variations in brain of mice with parkinsonism

Parkinson’s disease characterized by oxidative stress and mitochondrial damage in the pars compacta of substantia nigra remains a challenge to manage with an added disadvantage of side effects of L-levo dopa, ...

Authors: Uvarajan Sampath and Vanisree Arambakkam Janardhanam

Deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease

For the last 50 years, levodopa has been the cornerstone of Parkinson’s disease management. However, a majority of patients develop motor complications a few years after therapy onset. Deep brain stimulation h...

Authors: Raja Mehanna and Eugene C Lai

What does complement do in Alzheimer’s disease? Old molecules with new insights

Increasing evidence suggests that inflammatory and immune components in brain are important in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and anti-inflammatory and immunotherapeutic approaches may be amenable to AD treatment. I...

Authors: Yong Shen, Libang Yang and Rena Li

Uptake and mitochondrial dysfunction of alpha-synuclein in human astrocytes, cortical neurons and fibroblasts

The accumulation and aggregation of alpha-synuclein (α-syn) in several tissue including the brain is a major pathological hallmark in Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this study, we show that α-syn can be taken up...

Authors: Nady Braidy, Wei-Ping Gai, Ying Hua Xu, Perminder Sachdev, Gilles J Guillemin, Xing-Mai Jiang, J William O Ballard, Martin P Horan, Zhi Ming Fang, Beng H Chong and DanielKam Yin Chan

Monoamine oxidase-B (MAO-B) inhibitors: implications for disease-modification in Parkinson’s disease

There is a substantial amount of evidence from experimental parkinsonian models to show the neuroprotective effects of monoamine oxidase-B (MAOB) inhibitors. They have been studied for their potential disease-...

Authors: Kay Cheong Teo and Shu-Leong Ho

Progress of basic research in Parkinson’s disease in China: data mini-review from the National Natural Science Foundation

This review is to analyze the role of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) on the development of basic research of Parkinson’s disease from 1990 to 2012. Data on the total number of projects and...

Authors: Heqi Cao, Gang Chen and Erdan Dong

Evidence of neurodegeneration in autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological disorder in which a significant number of children experience a developmental regression characterized by a loss of previously-acquired skills and abilities. Lo...

Authors: Janet K Kern, David A Geier, Lisa K Sykes and Mark R Geier