Browsing by Subject "nervtillväxtfaktorer"

Parkinson's disease is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by muscle rigidity, hypokinesia, tremors and bradykinesia. The cause of symptoms in Parkinson's disease is loss of dopaminergic nerve cells in the substantia nigra, which attenuates the nigrostriatal dopaminergic signaltransmission. Oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, protein misfolding and aggregation, inflammation, excitotoxicity, apoptosis and other routes for cell death, and loss of neurotrophic factors have shown to be mechanisms in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. Microglia might have a double role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. Microglia stimulated by Į- synuclein does not only produce toxic factors such as certain cytokines and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, which contribute to the neuronal cell death but also produce anti-inflammatory cytokines and neurotrophic factors, which can be neuroprotective. Deeper knowledge of the mechanisms underlying Parkinson's disease is needed for developing restorative medicines. Three different neurotrophic factor families are known to be important in the research of Parkinson's disease. The GDNF-family consists of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), neurturin (NRTN), artemin (ARTN) and persephin (PSPN). The neurotrophin-family consists of nerve growth factor (NGF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophins NT3 and NT4/5. The most recently discovered family is the MANF-family, which consists of mesencephalic astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factor (MANF) and conserved dopamine neurotrophic factor (CDNF). In Parkinson's disease the neurotrophic factors could stop, slow or ideally even reverse the neurodegeneration in the dopaminergic system and decrease the functional decline of the neurons. Research has already shown that GDNF has both a neurorestorative and neuroprotective effect in animal models of Parkinson's disease. Clinical trials have however shown controversial results. The challenge with neurotrophic factors can be the administration to the brain through the blood-brain-barrier, sideeffects because of receptor binding in other organs or sites of the body and low diffusionrate. Research of both MANF and CDNF has shown promising neurorestorative and -protective results in vivo. Local diffusion of MANF has been shown to be better than of GDNF. In this Master's thesis research was done on whether MANF and CDNF have a neurorestorative effect on the dopaminergic nerve cells in mixed primary culture in vitro after 6-OHDA exposure. The aim of the study was to receive information about whether MANF and CDNF are as effective as GDNF at repairing celldamages caused by 6-OHDA in vitro in this experimental model. GDNF was used as a posivite control in this study. The results from this study suggest that MANF might have a neurorestorative effect, but this effect is much smaller than with the neurotrophic factor GDNF. The results show no neurorestorative effect with CDNF. Neither the dopamine uptake nor the tyrosine hydroxylase staining showed statistical significance.