a substantial amount of evidence has proposed an important role for cyclooxygenase-2 (cox-2) enzyme in brain diseases and affiliate disorders. the purpose of this research was studying the effects of cox-2 selective inhibition on haloperidol-induced catatonia in an animal model of drug overdose and parkinson’s disease (pd). in this study, the effect of acute and sub-chronic oral administration ...

The modulation of motor behavior by protein kinase C (PKC) signaling pathways in nigrostriatal neurons was examined by using a genetic intervention approach. Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) vectors that encode a catalytic domain of rat PKCbetaII (PkcDelta) were developed. PkcDelta exhibited a constitutively active protein kinase activity with a substrate specificity similar to that of rat b...

Synucleins are involved in multiple steps of the neurotransmitter turnover, but the largely normal synaptic function in young adult animals completely lacking synucleins suggests their roles are dispensable for execution of these processes. Instead, they may be utilized for boosting the efficiency of certain molecular mechanisms in presynaptic terminals, with a deficiency of synuclein proteins ...

Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative movement disorder characterized by selective degeneration of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons, affects ;1% of the population over 50. Because nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) may represent an important therapeutic target for this disorder, we performed experiments to elucidate the subtypes altered with nigrostriatal damage in parkinsonian mon...

Diffusion tensor tractography was used to evaluate whether diffusion metrics in the nigrostriatal pathway could diagnose Parkinson disease. Diffusion tensor imaging was performed on 30 patients with Parkinson disease and 32 healthy controls by using a 3.0 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging system. Diffusion tensor tractography was used for both groups to visualize the nigrostriatal and corticospi...

The main strategy in experimental and clinical neural transplantation in Parkinson's disease has been to place fetal nigral grafts not in their ontogenic site (substantia nigra) but in their target area (striatum). The reason for this ectopic placement is the apparent inability of nigral grafts placed in the ventral mesencephalon (VM) of the adult host to grow axons for long distances that are ...

neuroleptic malignant syndrome (nms) is a rare fatal medical complication that occurs as a result of dopaminergic receptor blockage in the caudate at the termination of the nigrostriatal pathways (1), and may occur at any time following consumption of dopamine antagonists. this disorder also occurs in cases of sudden discontinuation of dopamine agonists and antagonists (2,3). some studies have ...

The presence of distinct nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subtypes in specific central nervous system (CNS) areas offers the possibility of developing targeted therapies for diseases involving the affected brain region. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative movement disorder characterized by a progressive degeneration of the nigrostriatal system. alpha6-containing nAChRs (designate...

Human studies and preclinical models of Parkinson's disease implicate the involvement of both the innate and adaptive immune systems in disease progression. Further, pro-inflammatory markers are highly enriched near neurons containing pathological forms of alpha synuclein (α-syn), and α-syn overexpression recapitulates neuroinflammatory changes in models of Parkinson's disease. These data sugge...