OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate whether plasma serotonin levels or acetylcholinesterase activities determined upon intensive care unit admission could predict the occurrence of acute brain dysfunction in intensive care unit patients. METHODS A prospective cohort study was conducted with a sample of 77 non-consecutive patients observed between May 2009 and September 2010. De...

Acetylcholinesterase, an erythroid marker constitutively ex pressed in K-562 cells, can be further induced by sodium butyrate. The highest level of acetylcholinesterase induction is reached in =3 days, in parallel with increased hemoglobin expres sion. Acetylcholinesterase induction is reversible, and repeated addition of butyrate is necessary to maintain a high level of the enzyme. Actinomycin...

Acetylcholinesterase levels were determined in cerebrospinal fluid and serum of 272 patients with various neurological disorders. The patients were ordered in 13 diagnostic groups. The assay employed was an antigen capture assay based on an immobilized monoclonal antibody selective for neuronal acetylcholinesterase (Rasmussen et al., Clin. Chim. Acta 166 (1987) 17-25 (1)). In 100% of the cases ...

Mutations of the Caenorhabditis elegans dystrophin/utrophin-like dys-1 gene lead to hyperactivity and hypercontraction of the animals. In addition dys-1 mutants are hypersensitive to acetylcholine and acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. We investigated this phenotype further by assaying acetylcholinesterase activity. Total extracts from three different dys-1 alleles showed significantly less acety...

In immature animals, ablation of the entorhinal cortex elicited a rapid intensification of acetylcholinesterase (EC 3.1.1.7) staining in the outer one-quarter of the molecular layer of the dentate gyrus. Subsequent lesions of the septum eliminated this acetylcholinesterase intensification. Electron-microscopic histochemical analysis demonstrated a 30-fold increase in the number of acetylcholine...

The interaction between acetylcholinesterase (EC 3.1.1.7) and heparin, a sulphated glycosaminoglycan, was studied by affinity chromatography. A specific binding of the asymmetric acetylcholinesterase to an agarose gel containing covalently bound heparin was demonstrated. This interaction required an intact collagenous tail, shown by the fact that the binding is abolished by pretreatment with co...

A chemiluminescence method for determining acetylcholinesterase activity is described. It is an adaptation of the chemiluminescence assay of acetylcholine described by Israël & Lesbats [(1981) Neurochem. Int. 3, 81-90; (1981) J. Neurochem. 37, 1475-1483]. The acetylcholinesterase activity is measured by monitoring the increase in light emission produced by the accumulation of choline or by dete...

An acetylcholinesterase inhibitor-Sepharose conjugate was prepared by coupling a derivative of the powerful acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, N-methylacridinium, to CNBr-activated Sepharose. Use of this conjugate permitted direct purification, by affinity chromatography, of the two molecular forms of acetylcholinesterase, 14 and 18 S, present in fresh electric organ tissue. The purified 14S and 1...

This report presents a comparative description of the acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase activities and their molecular forms in primary cultures of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). Acetylcholinesterase activity increases during differentiation of the cells. Sucrose sedimentation analysis of acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase molecular forms revealed the presence of A12...

Computer simulations constitute the basis of the design and discovery of new drugs. This approach is not only significant with regards to finding new structures, but also for selecting the molecules with the highest probability of being useful in the diagnostic process and treatment of numerous diseases. In our work, we used computational software to analyze 32 new acetylcholinesterase (AChE) i...