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We studied the effect of acetyl-l-carnitine plus nicotinamide (AC + N) on murine diabetes mellitus induced by multiple low doses of streptozotocin.

Innumerous data support the fact that insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) is the primary enzymatic mechanism for initiating and controlling cellular insulin degradation. Nevertheless, insulin degradation is unlikely to be the only cellular function of IDE, because it appears that some cellular effects of insulin are mediated by IDE as a regulatory protein. Insulin-degrading enzyme shows a significant correlation with various cellular functions, such as cellular growth and differentiation, and the expression of IDE is developmentally regulated. Besides insulin, other substrates are also degraded by IDE, including various growth-promoting peptides. It has also been shown that IDE enhances the binding of androgen to DNA in the nuclear compartment. It is also known that the androgen hormones have a stimulatory effect on prostate growth, and that estradiol stimulates uterine growth. To establish whether IDE is regulated by a cellular prostate/uterine growth stimulus, the present study assessed whether IDE was modified in quantity and activity during proliferative conditions (castration + testosterone in the male rat, or castration + estradiol or the proestrus phase of the estrous cycle in the female rat) and autolysis (castration or the metestrus phase of the estrous cycle) using cytosolic and nuclear fractions of rat prostate and cytosolic fractions of rat uterus. The activity and amount of IDE decreased in the cytosolic fraction with castration and during metestrus, and increased with testosterone or estradiol treatment and during proestrus. In the nuclear fraction, the quantity of the IDE followed the same pattern observed in the cytosolic fraction, although without degradative activity. The data presented here suggest that IDE may participate in prostatic and uterine growth and that the testosterone or estradiol and/or prostate and uterus insulin-like growth factors may be important factors for the expression and regulation of IDE in the prostate and uterus

The so-called Xp21 contiguous deletion syndrome or complex glycerol kinase deficiency (GKD) usually presents with classical Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) or a milder dystrophic myopathy, adrenal hypoplasia, and GKD. A number of syndromic and nonsyndromic cases of agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) also map to that location. To date, none of the cases of complex GKD have been associated with ACC. Here, we report on a patient with a complex phenotype as a result of the Xp21 contiguous deletion syndrome in association with ACC. Biochemical, cytogenetic, and molecular analyses were performed to detect and establish the size of the genomic deletion. It is at least 3 million base pairs in length; however, exact limits could not be determined in the present study. Nevertheless, we suggest the presence of a primary gene involved in the embryogenesis of the corpus callosum between Xp21.1 and Xp22.11. Am. J. Med. Genet. 70:216–221, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.