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S Urschel

Publications and source records attributed to S Urschel.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Recurrent pericarditis in children: elevated cardiac autoantibodies.

UNLABELLED: Recurrent pericarditis is a rare disease in childhood. Nevertheless, it may represent a challenge to the clinician due to its resistance to anti-inflammatory treatment. The initial etiology often remains unclear; specific laboratory parameters predicting the frequency or severity of the recurrences are lacking. We report on four patients with recurrent pericarditis in whom antimyolemmal antibodies (AMLAs) were detected. A prolonged persistence of IgM-type AMLAs was found in three patients: two of them presented with acute inflammation as the initial event and one with 48 recurrences during 5.5 years. The fourth patient showed a fast conversion from IgM to IgG-type AMLAs after a less acute initial presentation and showed 4 mild recurrences during the 48-month follow-up. CONCLUSION: We were able to detect AMLAs in four children with recurrent pericarditis. This finding may be attributed to an auto-immunological disease following a first, acute event. We propose the detection of AMLAs in all children with unexplained recurrent pericarditis. Pediatric patients with a persistence of IgM-type AMLAs may face frequent recurrences and should be monitored therefore more closely. In addition, medical treatment may be changed in these patients with a slower tapering of the dosage of steroidal and non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed2003

Spatiotemporal transcription of connexin45 during brain development results in neuronal expression in adult mice.

Characterization of the expression pattern of connexins in neural tissue is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the functional relevance of the corresponding gap junction channels in brain. Here we describe the cell type-specific expression of connexin45 in the CNS and the spatiotemporal expression pattern from embryonic day 19.5 to adult brain using a recently described connexin45 LacZ-reporter mouse. The connexin45 gene is highly expressed during embryogenesis and up to 2 weeks after birth in nearly all brain regions. Afterward its expression is restricted to the thalamus, the CA3 region of hippocampus and the cerebellum. In adult mouse brain, the pattern of LacZ-staining in combination with the analysis of different neuronal and glial marker proteins strongly suggests that connexin45 is expressed in neurons, but presumably not in astrocytes or mature oligodendrocytes. Expression of the LacZ/connexin45 reporter gene in subsets of neurons, such as cerebral cortical, hippocampal and thalamic neurons as well as basket and stellate cells of cerebellum should be corroborated by functional investigations of connexin45 protein in electrical synapses. Based on its expression pattern during development, we suggest that the connexin45-containing gap junction channels have a rather ubiquitous role during brain development and may contribute to functional specification in certain subsets of neurons in the adult brain.

Aging↗
PubMed2000

Expression pattern of galectin-3 in neural tumor cell lines.

Galectin-3 is a member of the galectin family of beta-galactoside-specific animal lectins. Here we show that galectin-3 is constitutively expressed in 15 out of 16 glioma cell lines tested, but not by normal or reactive astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, glial O-2A progenitor cells and the oligodendrocyte precursor cell line Oli-neu. Galectin-3 is also expressed by one oligodendroglioma cell line, but not by primitive neuroectodermal tumor and 4 neuroblastoma cell lines tested so far. In all galectin-3 expressing cell lines, the lectin is predominantly, if not exclusively, localized intracellularly and carries an active carbohydrate recognition domain (shown for C6 rat glioma cells). Moreover, in contrast to primary astrocytes, glioma cells do not or only weakly adhere to substratum-bound galectin-3, probably reflecting an unusual glycosylation pattern. Our findings indicate that the expression of galectin-3 selectively correlates with glial cell transformation in the central nervous system and could thus serve as a marker for glial tumor cell lines and glial tumors.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

Murine microglial cells express functionally active galectin-3 in vitro.

In the present study we have analyzed the expression of galectin-3, a beta-galactoside-specific soluble animal lectin, by microglial cells in vitro. In enriched microglial cell cultures derived from neonatal mouse brain after 2 to 3 weeks in vitro, almost all microglial cells expressed galectin-3 intracellularly and about 90% expressed the molecule on the cell surface. Western blot analyses of lysates from microglial cells using galectin-3-specific antibodies revealed a single band with an apparent molecular weight of 29 kD. The carbohydrate recognition domain of microglia-derived galectin-3 was functional as the molecule could be affinity purified on lactose-agarose. Upon an incubation with lactose-, but not with sucrose-containing buffers the amount of cell surface expressed galectin-3 was strongly reduced, suggesting that the molecule appears to be associated with the plasma membrane via its carbohydrate recognition domain. The total amount as well as the portion of cell surface expressed galectin-3 increased upon treatment with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor. Our findings suggest that galectin-3 expression is subject to regulation by growth factors supposed to be involved in the cascade of microglial activation under pathological conditions.

Animals↗