The cingulate gyri in 37 subjects with and without early dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) were studied by using MRI at 1.0 mm3 isotropic resolution. Groups were segregated into young controls (n = 10), age-matched normal controls (n = 10), very mild DAT (n = 8), and mild DAT (n = 9). By using automated Bayesian segmentation of the cortex and gray matter/white matter (GM/WM) isosurface gener...

Listeria monocytogenes has been exploited previously as a vaccine vector for the delivery of heterologous proteins such as tumor-specific antigens for active cancer immunotherapy. However, for effective use of live vector in clinics, safety is a major concern. In the present study, we describe an irreversibly attenuated and highly immunogenic L. monocytogenes platform, the L. monocytogenes dal-...

Insulin degrading enzyme (IDE) degrades amyloid beta (Abeta), which may inhibit the accumulation of Abeta in a brain affected with dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT). A decrease in the activity of IDE results in changes in glucose utilization in the brain, which could affect the cognitive and psychiatric symptoms of DAT. We investigated a possible association of IDE gene polymorphism and the be...

OBJECTIVE To compare a PCR assay and direct agglutination test (DAT) for the detection of potential markers of Leishmania infection in 231 healthy subjects living in a kala-azar endemic focus of Nepal. METHODS The sample was composed of 184 (80%) persons without any known history of KA and not living in the same house as known kala-azar cases (HNK), 24 (10%) Healthy Household Contacts (HHC) a...

As an approach to elucidating dopamine transporter (DAT) phosphorylation characteristics, we examined in vitro phosphorylation of a recombinant rat DAT N-terminal peptide (NDAT) using purified protein kinases. We found that NDAT becomes phosphorylated at single distinct sites by protein kinase A (Ser-7) and calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (Ser-13) and at multiple sites (Ser-4, Se...

We prospectively evaluated the diagnostic contribution of (123)I-FP-Cit (DAT) and (123)I-IBZM (IBZM) SPECT in 29 patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) (74.4 ± 4.2 years) and 28 patients with atypical parkinsonian diseases (APD) (74.3 ± 9.2 years). Twelve had multiple system atrophy (MSA) and 16 progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Sixteen age-matched healthy controls (HC) were included. DAT a...

The dopamine transporter (DAT) plays an important role in calibrating the duration and intensity of dopamine neurotransmission in the central nervous system. We have used a strain of mice in which the gene for the DAT has been genetically deleted to identify the DAT's homeostatic role. We find that removal of the DAT dramatically prolongs the lifetime (300 times) of extracellular dopamine. With...

BACKGROUND The relationship between monosymptomatic resting tremor (mRT) and Parkinson's disease (PD) remains controversial. In this study, we aimed to assess the function of presynaptic dopaminergic neurons in patients with mRT by dopamine transporter positron emission tomography (DAT-PET) and to evaluate the utility of clinical features or electrophysiological studies in differential diagnosi...

We evaluated lymph node aspiration (LNA) as a simple diagnostic procedure for visceral leishmaniasis (VL). Lymph node aspiration was compared with the direct agglutination test (DAT) using a diagnostic titer > or = 1:6,400 in 7,880 suspected VL patients in eastern Sudan. Compared with DAT, LNA had a sensitivity of 65.1% (95% confidence interval = 63.5-66.6%). Parasite density in LNA correlated ...

Reactive oxygen species decrease dopamine transporter (DAT) function in vitro. Because of this, and the finding that METH administration causes oxygen radical formation in vivo, the effects of METH administration on DAT activity in rat striatum were investigated. A single METH injection caused a dose-dependent (0-15 mg/kg) decrease in [3H]dopamine uptake into striatal synaptosomes prepared 1 h ...