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Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the possible role of JAG1 gene mutations in modulating clinical features in patients with CADASIL-like phenotype which resulted negative for NOTCH3 gene mutations. Sixty-six CADASIL-like patients without NOTCH3 gene mutations were investigated for 5 out of 26 exons of the JAG1 gene, whose mutations were implicated in central nervous system vascular abnormalities. PCR was performed with primers specific for exons 3, 4, 13, 23 and 24 comprising the intron–exon boundaries. Amplicons were then analyzed by denaturing high performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC). The exons showing a variant DHPLC profile were directly sequenced. The sequence of exons 3, 4 and 23 revealed the presence of four already described polymorphisms in JAG1. 1001C/T (g.16015 C>T) in exon 4 was found in 9 patients, IVS23+18delT (g.33147 delT) in 29 patients, IVS3-15T/C (g.15852 T>C) in 17 patients, IVS2-43C/T (g.10532 C>T) in 1 patient; both the polymorphism 1001C/T and IVS3-15T/C were found in 3 patients. No mutations were found. These data demonstrate absence of correlation between mutations in specific JAG1 gene exons and clinical features in patients with CADASIL-like phenotype. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) lie on a clinical, pathologic, and genetic continuum. Neuroimaging techniques have proven to be potentially useful to unravel the shared features of these syndromes. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI), we investigated functional connectivity of brain networks in 15 ALS and 15 bvFTD patients in early stages of disease and 15 healthy controls, looking expressly for connectivity pattern divergence or overlap between the 2 disorders. Compared with controls, we found decreased RS-fMRI signals within sensorimotor, right frontoparietal, salience, and executive networks in both patient groups. Within the default mode network (DMN), divergent connectivity patterns were observed, with RS-fMRI signals in the posterior cingulate cortex enhanced in bvFTD patients and suppressed in ALS patients. Our findings confirm that ALS and bvFTD not only broadly share common RS-fMRI connectivity patterns, probably representing different phenotypical expressions of the same neurodegenerative process, but also differ in the DMN, probably reflecting a different stage of neurodegeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated a CAG trinucleotide repeat expansion in the ATXN2 gene in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Two new case-control studies, a British dataset of 1474 ALS cases and 567 controls, and a Dutch dataset of 1328 ALS cases and 691 controls were analyzed. In addition, to increase power, we systematically searched PubMed for case-control studies published after 1 August 2010 that investigated the association between ATXN2 intermediate repeats and ALS. We conducted a meta-analysis of the new and existing studies for the relative risks of ATXN2 intermediate repeat alleles of between 24 and 34 CAG trinucleotide repeats and ALS. There was an overall increased risk of ALS for those carrying intermediate sized trinucleotide repeat alleles (odds ratio 3.06 [95% confidence interval 2.37–3.94]; p = 6 × 10 −18 ), with an exponential relationship between repeat length and ALS risk for alleles of 29–32 repeats (R 2 = 0.91, p = 0.0002). No relationship was seen for repeat length and age of onset or survival. In contrast to trinucleotide repeat diseases, intermediate ATXN2 trinucleotide repeat expansion in ALS does not predict age of onset but does predict disease risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]