The serum of dysautonomia patients enhances proliferation and signaling in Schwann cells. Neurosci Lett 2010 Jan 04;468(2):130-5
Date
11/03/2009Pubmed ID
19879922DOI
10.1016/j.neulet.2009.10.083Scopus ID
2-s2.0-70450221665 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)Abstract
Disorders of the autonomic nervous system, or dysautonomias, affect a large segment of the population, especially women, and represent a diagnostic challenge. Identification of biomarkers for autonomic disorders, and the subsequent development of screening methods, would benefit diagnosis and symptom management. We studied the effect of sera from fifteen well-characterized dysautonomia patients (mean age 49+/-16 years, 10 females, 5 males) and ten control subjects (mean age 31+/-14 years, 5 females, 5 males) on the proliferation of cultured Schwann cells and activity of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) in these cells. We correlated characteristics of patients with the effects on cell proliferation and signaling. Overall, we observed a significant increase in proliferation when Schwann cells were incubated with sera from female dysautonomia patients when compared to control subjects and male patients. Interestingly, removal of IgGs significantly reduced the proliferative effect of patient sera. We also observed significant activation of p38 MAPK following incubation with both male and female patient sera. These results suggest that patient sera contain factors that contribute to aberrant Schwann cell proliferation and signaling and may ultimately lead to autonomic nerve dysfunction. Our observations represent a promising first step in the identification of dysautonomia biomarkers.
Author List
Lambrecht RH, Pollard KA, Alshekhlee A, Chelimsky TC, Berti-Mattera LNMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultAged
Biological Factors
Cell Proliferation
Cells, Cultured
Enzyme Activation
Extracellular Signal-Regulated MAP Kinases
Female
Humans
Immunoglobulin G
Male
Middle Aged
Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases
Primary Dysautonomias
Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-akt
Schwann Cells
Serum
Sex Factors
Signal Transduction
Young Adult
p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases
