Female mice heterozygous for creatine transporter deficiency show moderate cognitive deficits

Females heterozygous for creatine transporter deficiency

The creatine transporter deficiency is an X-linked cause of intellectual disability. We investigated the clinical features and pattern of X-inactivation in a Dutch cohort of eight female heterozygotes. We show that symptoms of the creatine transporter deficiency (intellectual disability, learning difficulties, constipation) can be present in female heterozygotes. We further show that the diagno...

Cyclocreatine treatment improves cognition in mice with creatine transporter deficiency.

The second-largest cause of X-linked mental retardation is a deficiency in creatine transporter (CRT; encoded by SLC6A8), which leads to speech and language disorders with severe cognitive impairment. This syndrome, caused by the absence of creatine in the brain, is currently untreatable because CRT is required for creatine entry into brain cells. Here, we developed a brain-specific Slc6a8 knoc...

Pathogenesis of creatine transporter deficiency

Moderate elevation of intracellular creatine by targeting the creatine transporter protects mice from acute myocardial infarction

AIMS Increasing energy storage capacity by elevating creatine and phosphocreatine (PCr) levels to increase ATP availability is an attractive concept for protecting against ischaemia and heart failure. However, testing this hypothesis has not been possible since oral creatine supplementation is ineffectual at elevating myocardial creatine levels. We therefore used mice overexpressing creatine tr...

Deficits in acetylcholine homeostasis, receptors and behaviors in choline transporter heterozygous mice.

Cholinergic neurons elaborate a hemicholinium-3 (HC-3) sensitive choline transporter (CHT) that mediates presynaptic, high-affinity choline uptake (HACU) in support of acetylcholine (ACh) synthesis and release. Homozygous deletion of CHT (-/-) is lethal shortly after birth (Ferguson et al. 2004), consistent with CHT as an essential component of cholinergic signaling, but precluding functional a...