Neuropsychiatric Disorders in Dementia: Mechanisms of Development and Approaches to Correction

Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology - Dementia is often combined with other mental disorders which can manifest at different stages of the disease. The severity and rate of progression of these...     

Getting on target: Development of the novel,prozone-resistant,dual antibody rapid test (DART) for the LABScreen single antigen bead (SAB) assay

A major limitation of the single antigen bead (SAB) assay is the so called prozone effect, whereby the detection of high titer complement fixing HLA antibodies is compromised due to complement split product (from C3 and C4 components) deposition and interference with the reporter anti-IgG-PE antibody binding. Strategies to minimize prozone include serum titration or treatment with heat, dithiotreitol (DTT), or ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA). While effective, these treatments may compromise HLA antibody binding and detection. Here we describe the Dual Antibody Rapid Test (DART), a modified version of the rapid optimized SAB (ROB) protocol, in which we use an IgG-PE/C3d-PE antibody cocktail to simultaneously detect bead bound IgG and C3d, which allows for detection of HLA antibodies independent of the prozone effect. Twenty prozone positive sera (10 class I and 10 class II), identified by titration, were tested by the ROB protocol, with or without EDTA pre-treatment, using three reporter antibody cocktails: (1) IgG-PE, (2) C3d-PE, or (3) IgG-PE/C3d-PE (DART). Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) values were then compared. IgG negative (n = 735) vs IgG positive (n = 1185) reactions were identified using a 1000 MFI IgG EDTA cutoff. IgG positive reactions were classified based on ΔMFI (IgG EDTA – IgG) as follows: (1) prozone negative (ΔMFI < 3000; n = 737), (2) slight prozone (ΔMFI 3001–5000; n = 49), (3) moderate prozone (ΔMFI 5001–10,000; n = 93), and (4) marked prozone (ΔMFI > 10,001; n = 306). No C3d deposition was present on IgG negative beads, and the majority of prozone positive specificities (438/448; 98%) fixed complement and were detected with the C3d-PE reporter. Interestingly, C3d-PE MFI was directly proportional to the degree of prozone (mean C3d-PE MFI = 4419.5 ± 1606.3 for slight, 5991.0 ± 2302.7 for moderate, and 12,417.4 ± 2969.9 for marked prozone specificities). Interestingly, EDTA treatment was found to have a negative impact on MFI of up to 15% of prozone negative specificities. Importantly, the DART protocol detected all prozone positive specificities while MFI for prozone negative specificities correlated well with those seen with the IgG-PE reporter alone (R² = 0.97). In conclusion, the DART protocol accurately detects HLA antibodies independent of the prozone effect. Implementation of DART is an easy way to overcome the prozone effect without compromising HLA antibody detection.     

Effects of the Interaction of the ANKK1/DRD2 TaqIA and HTR2C Cys23Ser Polymorphisms on Approach Motivation in Schizophrenia Patients and Healthy People

Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology - Objective. To assess the association of the DRD2 gene and its interaction with the HTR2C gene with the characteristics of the hedonistic and activatory...     

Efficacy of Music Therapy in the Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients

Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology - Objective. To assess the dynamics of recovery of motor, speech, and autonomous functions in patients with ischemic stroke (IS) using music therapy....     

Use of Anchoring Motifs to Support the Central and Peripheral Locations of Opsins in Optogenetics

Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology - One version of the optogenetic prosthetization of the degenerative retina is an approach based on creation of an ON/OFF receptive field for ganglion neurons...     

Comparative Characteristics of the Expression of Inducible NO Synthase in the Hippocampus of Humans and Experimental Animals

Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology - Objective: To study the characteristics of the expression of inducible NO synthase (iNOS) in hippocampal fields CA1 and CA3 in adult male humans and adult...     

Multi-cellularity in cardiac tissue engineering,how close are we to native heart tissue?

Journal of Muscle Research and Cell Motility - Tissue engineering is a complex field where the elements of biology and engineering are combined in an attempt to recapitulate the native environment...