(Press-News.org)
Central diabetes insipidus (CDI), a rare condition involving the destruction or degeneration of neurons of the hypothalamic-posterior pituitary in the brain, has several likely underlying clinical causes. Patients with CDI experience excessive thirst and excessive urine production, owing to the decreased secretion of AVP. Moreover, in children and young adults with CDI, a malignant tumor known as a 'germinoma' may develop later in life. The diagnosis of these tumors is challenging, because biopsy in intracranial lesions is difficult.
Lymphocytic infundibulo-neurohypophysitis (LINH) or inflammation of the pituitary, is often observed in patients with idiopathic CDI. A research team from Japan had previously suggested that LINH can be specifically diagnosed by examining the presence of anti-rabphilin-3A antibodies. Rabphilin-3A is a protein that is primarily found in the brain and is involved in some key neurological functions. As LINH and CDI are closely related, they speculated that patients with CDI who have these antibodies should be ideally free of germinomas. To validate their hypothesis, the researchers, led by Professor Yoshihisa Sugimura from the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Fujita Health University, highlighted the effectiveness of measuring anti-rabphilin-3A antibodies for the prediction of germinomas in patients with CDI.
Their article was published in Hormones on September 11, 2023, and was co-authored by Haruki Fujisawa of Fujita Health University and Takako Takeuchi of Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine. “We summarized two very interesting case studies of patients with idiopathic CDI who lacked anti-rabphilin-3A antibodies and eventually developed germinomas,” says Prof. Sugimura.
The case reports involved a 13-year-old boy and a 19-year-old young man, both diagnosed with idiopathic CDI, with reduced hormone production from the gland. During the course of clinical investigations, blood samples were collected from both patients approximately 1 years and 6 months after the onset of CDI. The researchers looked for the presence of anti-rabphilin-3A antibodies in the blood/serum samples using Western blotting experiments. There were, however, no antibodies detected in either patient. Interestingly, both patients were diagnosed with germinomas within 15 months of CDI diagnosis and were successfully treated for the same. Prof. Sugimura remarks “These findings suggest that autoimmune mechanisms might not be involved here. Also, the timely assessment of anti-rabphilin-3A antibodies in the serum of patients with CDI is extremely important.”
Germinomas may occur in cases that show no or little abnormality in diagnostic imaging. Therefore, besides opting for regular imaging-based monitoring, the article also recommends testing for anti-rabphilin-3A antibodies, as their absence elevates the risk for the subsequent development of non-lymphocytic lesions, that include germinomas. “All patients with CDI must be carefully monitored to improve the clinical outcomes associated with non-lymphocytic lesions, including germinomas,” concludes Prof. Sugimura.
Kudos to the research team for identifying a new biomarker for promptly predicting reproductive cell tumors!
***
Reference
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42000-023-00484-0
About Fujita Health University
Fujita Health University is a private university situated in Toyoake, Aichi, Japan. It was founded in 1964 and houses one of the largest teaching university hospitals in Japan in terms of the number of beds. With over 900 faculty members, the university is committed to providing various academic opportunities to students internationally. Fujita Health University has been ranked eighth among all universities and second among all private universities in Japan in the 2020 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. THE University Impact Rankings 2019 visualized university initiatives for sustainable development goals (SDGs). For the “good health and well-being” SDG, Fujita Health University was ranked second among all universities and number one among private universities in Japan. The university became the first Japanese university to host the "THE Asia Universities Summit" in June 2021. The university’s founding philosophy is “Our creativity for the people (DOKUSOU-ICHIRI),” which reflects the belief that, as with the university’s alumni and alumnae, current students also unlock their future by leveraging their creativity.
Website: https://www.fujita-hu.ac.jp/en/index.html
About Professor Yoshihisa Sugimura from Fujita Health University
Yoshihisa Sugimura works as a Professor at the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Fujita Health University, Japan. His research group primarily focuses on central diabetes insipidus, rabphilin‑3A, arginine vasopressin, autoimmune hypophisitis, hyponatremia, neuronal function, and demyelinating diseases. Dr. Sugimura has over 85 publications to his credit, including those published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. He has also authored more than 20 books on a wide variety of research topics.
END
General anesthesia evokes a dual mystery: How does it disrupt consciousness, including sensory perception, and what might that say about the nature of consciousness. A new study led by researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT provides evidence in animals that consciousness depends on properly synchronized communication across the brain’s cortex and that the anesthetic drug propofol cancels sensory processing by cutting it off.
In the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers report clear evidence that in anesthetized animals, ...
Genetic information collected from seemingly healthy tissue near lung tumors may be a better predictor of whether cancer will come back after treatment than analysis of the tumors themselves, according to new research led by NYU Langone Health and its Perlmutter Cancer Center.
The new study focuses on lung adenocarcinoma, a cancer that forms in alveolar epithelial cells and accounts for about a third of all lung cancers in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most patients are cured if tumors are surgically removed early in the disease’s progression, but residual ...
UCLA scientists have developed a new method to engineer more powerful immune cells that can potentially be used for “off-the-shelf” cell therapy to treat challenging cancers.
“Off-the-shelf” cell therapy, also known as allogenic therapy, uses immune cells derived from healthy donors instead of patients. The approach can bring cell therapies, like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, to more patients in a timelier manner, which is one of the major barriers in getting these life-saving treatments to patients.
“Time is often of the essence when it comes to treating people with advanced cancers,” said Lili Yang, associate professor ...
A research team in Japan, led by Nagoya University’s Akira Yokoi, has developed an innovative technique using cellulose nanofiber (CNF) sheets derived from wood cellulose to capture extracellular vesicles (EVs) from fluid samples and even organs during surgery. EVs are small structures from cancerous cells that play a crucial role in cell-to-cell communication. Extracting and analyzing EVs using this new technology has the potential to revolutionize early cancer diagnosis and open the door to personalized medicine. The researchers published their findings in Nature Communications.
Cancer is notorious for its poor prognosis and in many cases goes undetected until its ...
Results from a new clinical trial suggest that a group of brain regions known as the “salience network” is activated after a drug is taken intravenously, but not when that same drug is taken orally. When drugs enter the brain quickly, such as through injection or smoking, they are more addictive than when they enter the brain more slowly, such as when they are taken orally. However, the brain circuits underlying these differences are not well understood. This study offers new information that helps explain what may be causing this difference.
The study was published in Nature Communications and led by researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National ...
The last 40 years have witnessed a deep transformation in our views of animal development. From seeing development a multicellular black box where over time a mass of cells acquires shape to form organs and tissues, we now have a detailed account of this process in terms of gene expression, multicellular activity, and morphogenesis.
This new point of view has raised questions about the relationships between genes, cells, and organisms. These questions are impacting our thinking about evolution, ...
Buprenorphine is a medication approved for pain and opioid dependence. New findings published in The American Journal on Addictions indicate that a transmucosal dose (which dissolves in the mouth) of buprenorphine followed by an injection of extended-release buprenorphine (BUP‐XR) may be an effective treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder who use fentanyl.
The results come from a recent secondary analysis of an open-label study in which 24 participants received a single 4 mg dose of transmucosal buprenorphine followed by an injection ...
In an analysis of published prospective studies of people of all ages with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who were followed for at least 12 months, pre-existing allergic conditions were linked to higher risks of experiencing long-term symptoms associated with COVID-19, or Long-COVID.
The analysis, which is published in Clinical & Experimental Allergy, identified 13 relevant studies (with a total of 9,967 participants) published between January 1, 2020 and January 19, 2023.
Although the data as a whole from the studies suggested that individuals with asthma or rhinitis might be at increased risk of Long-COVID after SARS-CoV-2 ...
In an analysis published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society that included older US women, caregiving was associated with a lower risk of death over an average follow-up of 17.5 years.
In the analysis of 158,987 women aged 50–79 years when enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative (a long-term national health study), 31.8% of women died during follow-up, and women who reported being a caregiver over 2 assessments 10 years apart had a 9% lower risk of dying from any cause compared with non-caregivers. Caregiving was also associated with lower risks of death from cardiovascular disease ...
A systematic review that analyzed the results of published studies concluded that school-based law enforcement (SBLE)—having sworn law enforcement officers stationed in schools on at least a part-time basis—is likely ineffective for keeping schools safe, and it may even have detrimental consequences.
The research, which is published in Campbell Systematic Reviews, included 32 studies that examined the relationship between SBLE presence and school-related outcomes including crime and behavior problems, perceptions of school, and student learning. The studies compared outcomes in schools with SBLE to those without SBLE, ...
