A recent report by Zhao et al. [Zhao, M., Momma, S., Delfani, K., Carlen, M., Cassidy, R. M., Johansson, C. B., Brismar, H., Shupliakov, O., Frisen, J. & Janson, A. M. (2003) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 7925-7930] suggests that dopaminergic neurons, the cell type lost in Parkinson's disease, are continuously generated in the adult substantia nigra pars compacta. Using similar methodological...

Background: Skin cancer is the most prevalent cancer and one of the major causes of mortality worldwide. Marin animals have attracted much attention in recent years as useful substances having application in medicine. It was shown that Phallusia nigra (P. nigra) known as sea squirt could play an important role in cancer therapy. Methods: This study was designed to figure out the probable select...

Gene delivery using adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors is a widely used method to transduce neurons in the brain, especially due to its safety, efficacy, and long-lasting expression. In addition, by varying AAV serotype, promotor, and titer, it is possible to affect the cell specificity of expression or the expression levels of the protein of interest. Dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra...

background and objective: parkinson’s disease (pd) is a rather common neurological disorder in elders that is due to degeneration of dopaminergic neurons within mesencephalic substantia nigra pars compacta. with regard to protective and antioxidant effect of simvastatin, this study was conducted to evaluate its neuroprotective effect in an experimental model of pd. materials and methods: in thi...

BACKGROUND Structural abnormality of the substantia nigra can be detected by transcranial sonography in neuropsychiatric disorders such as Parkinson disease and restless legs syndrome. We investigated echogenicity of the substantia nigra as a potential structural marker for dysfunction of the nigrostriatal dopamine system in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHO...

Neuroimaging is known to complement clinical findings in the diagnostic work up of parkinsonian syndromes. Recently, transcranial ultrasound was reported to have a high diagnostic yield in differentiating idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) from atypical parkinsonian syndromes. This report summarises the sonographic findings of 102 patients with IPD, 34 patients with multiple system atrophy, a...

Neuroimaging is known to complement clinical findings in the diagnostic work up of parkinsonian syndromes. Recently, transcranial ultrasound was reported to have a high diagnostic yield in differentiating idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) from atypical parkinsonian syndromes. This report summarises the sonographic findings of 102 patients with IPD, 34 patients with multiple system atrophy, a...

Neuroimaging findings in cases of St. Louis encephalitis (StLE) have yet to be reported despite the relatively high frequency of this entity. An epidemic permitted the documentation of isolated hyperintensity of the substantia nigra on T2-weighted images in two patients with StLE. This distribution of MR imaging abnormality in cases of StLE mirrors the reports presented in the literature that i...

Based on RFLP analysis, two evolutionary lineages for Brassica diploid species have been proposed. These are (I) the “nigra” lineage and (II) the “rapa/oleracea” lineage. The phylogenetic relationship of Raphanus species to these two lineages is still unclear because chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA genomic restriction site variation suggests that Raphanus is more closely related to the “rapa/...

The early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) and the accurate evaluation of disease severity are crucial for intervention and treatment in PD patients. In this study, we applied chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) imaging to patients at different stages of PD and explored the clinical value of the CEST signal loss of the substantia nigra as an imaging biomarker of PD. The measured C...