Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage will hold its 13th annual Gregory Austin Macres Memorial Golf Tournament on Oct. 26 at the Palo Alto Hills Golf & Country Club, 3000 Alexis Drive. Registration is $135 and is open until Monday. A raffle and silent auction will also be held at the event.

The event is a fundraiser for the Children’s Gaucher Research Fund. Children’s Gaucher Disease is a progressive debilitating genetic disease that attacks children and causes a variety of systemic and neurological medical complications. The public is encouraged to participate in the tournament and may register by contacting their local Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage office or sales associate. For more information on the Children’s Gaucher Research Fund, please visit www.childrensgaucher.org.

For more information on the Gregory Austin Macres Memorial Golf Tournament, call 925-275-3085.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/k0053551261l9n07/

The original guidelines drawn up for the management of the neuronopathic forms of Gaucher disease were felt to be in need of revision; in particular, the role of high-dose enzyme replacement therapy (120 IU/kg of body weight every 2 weeks) in stabilizing neurological disease. The existing published evidence was analysed; it was concluded that it did not support the role of high-dose ERT, although this might be required to treat severe visceral disease.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19576930?dopt=Abstract

The Parkinson’s Institute, 675 Almanor Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94085, USA.

A growing body of experimental and clinical literature indicates an association between Gaucher disease and parkinsonism, raising the possibility that convergent mechanisms may contribute to neurodegeneration in these disorders. The aim of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between alpha-synuclein (alpha-syn), a key protein in Parkinson’s disease pathogenesis, and abnormalities in glucocerebroside (GC) catabolism that lead to the development of Gaucher disease. We inhibited glucocerebrosidase (GCase) with conduritol B epoxide (CBE) in neuroblastoma cells and mice to test whether a biological link exists between GCase activity and alpha-syn. After CBE exposure, enhanced alpha-syn protein was detected in differentiated cells challenged with CBE as compared to vehicle, with no change in alpha-syn mRNA. In the mouse model, after one injection of CBE, elevated nigral alpha-syn levels were also detected. Analyses by Western blot and confocal microscopy revealed that normal alpha-syn distribution was perturbed after CBE exposure with its accumulation apparent within nigral cell bodies as well as astroglia. These findings raise the possibility that alpha-syn may contribute to the cascade of events that promote neuronal dysfunction in Gaucher disease and are the first to implicate this protein as a plausible biological intersection between Gaucher disease and parkinsonism using a pharmacological model.

PMID: 19576930 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19651460?dopt=Abstract

IBMC – Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 823, 4150-180 Porto, Portugal; ICBAS – Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto, Portugal.

Gaucher disease (GD) is associated with upregulation of CD1d and MHC-class II expression by monocytes. While the physiological impact of CD1d upregulation remains uncertain, it has been proposed that MHC-class II upregulation is associated with inflammation. Hereby, we show that the decrease in MHC-class II expression seen in GD patients under therapy correlates positively with chitotriosidase activity, a marker of inflamed macrophages. We also show that retinoic acid (RA) and the beta-glucocerebrosidase inhibitor conduritol-B-epoxide (CBE) lead to upregulation of CD1d expression by THP-1 cells, which correlated with an increase in mRNA expression. In vitro co-culture experiments showed that RA treated THP-1 cells were more stimulatory for CD4(+) than for CD8(+) T cells, as determined by CFSE loss, in comparison to untreated THP-1 cells. Interestingly, even though addition of exogenous isoglobotrihexosylceramide (iGb3), a physiological CD1d ligand, augmented the percentage of dividing CD4(+) T cells, we could not detect a significant expansion of CD4(+)Valpha24(+) invariant Natural Killer T (iNKT) cells. In contrast, addition of alpha-galactosylceramide (alpha-GC) induced expansion of Valpha24(+) iNKT cells as determined by using alpha-GC-loaded human CD1d dimers. These results strengthen the existence of a cross-talk between monocyte lipid accumulation, inflammation and changes in cell surface CD1d and MHC-class II in monocytes, which may result in inappropriate recognition events by immune cells and perpetuate chronic inflammation.

PMID: 19651460 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122441884/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Frédéric Sedel (frederic.sedel@psl.aphp.fr)

Ichraf Kraoua, MD 1, Jérôme Stirnemann, MD 2, Maria João Ribeiro, MD, PhD 3, Tiphaine Rouaud, MD 4, Marc Verin, MD, PhD 4, Agnès Annic, MD 5, Christian Rose, MD, PhD 6, Luc Defebvre, MD, PhD 5, Liliane Réménieras, MD 7, Michaël Schüpbach, MD 1, Nadia Belmatoug, MD 8, Marie Vidailhet, MD 1 9, Frédéric Sedel, MD, PhD 1 *
1Federation of Nervous System Diseases, Reference Center for Lysosomal Diseases, Salpêtrière Hospital, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, France 2Department of Internal Medicine, Jean Verdier Hospital, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris X111 University, France 3Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, I2BM, DSV, CEA, Orsay, France 4Department of Neurology, University Hospital of Rennes, Rennes, France 5Department of Neurology, University Hospital of Lille, Lille, France 6Department of Onco-Haematology, Saint Vincent de Paul Hospital, Lille, France 7Department of Haematology, University Hospitals of Limoges, Limoges, France 8Department of Internal Medicine, Reference Center for Lysosomal Diseases, Beaujon Hospital, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, France 9INSERM U679, Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) University, France
	email:

^*Correspondence to Frédéric Sedel, Federation of Nervous System Diseases and Reference Centre for Lysosomal Diseases, Salpêtrière Hospital, 47 Boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75651 Paris cedex 13, France

Potential conflict of interest: None reported.

Funded by:
 Genzyme

Keywords

Gaucher • glucocerebrosidase • parkinsonism • Parkinson’s disease • Lewy body dementia

Abstract

Parkinsonism has been described in patients with Gaucher’s disease (GD). We reviewed the 10 cases of patients with both parkinsonism and GD recorded in the French national GD registry, as well as 49 previously published cases. Relative to the general population, parkinsonism in GD patients (1) was more frequent, (2) occurred at an earlier age, (3) responded less well to levodopa, and (4) was more frequently associated with signs of cortical dysfunction. Enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) and substrate reduction therapy (SRT) were ineffective on GD-associated parkinsonism, suggesting that parkinsonism itself is not an indication for ERT or SRT in this setting. © 2009 Movement Disorder Society