The goal of this study was to elucidate the mechanisms of 17␤-estradiol (E 2 ) antioxidant and neuroprotective actions in stroke. The results reveal a novel extranuclear receptor-mediated antioxidant mechanism for E 2 during stroke, as well as a hypersensitivity of the CA3/CA4 region to ischemic injury after prolonged hypoestrogenicity. E 2 neuroprotection was shown to involve a profound attenuation of NADPH oxidase activation and superoxide production in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons after stroke, an effect mediated by extranuclear estrogen receptor ␣ (ER␣)-mediated nongenomic signaling, involving Akt activation and subsequent phosphorylation/ inactivation of Rac1, a factor critical for activation of NOX2 NADPH oxidase. Intriguingly, E 2 nongenomic signaling, antioxidant action, and neuroprotection in the CA1 region were lost after long-term E 2 deprivation, and this loss was tissue specific because the uterus remained responsive to E 2 . Correspondingly, a remarkable loss of ER␣, but not ER␤, was observed in the CA1 after long-term E 2 deprivation, with no change observed in the uterus. As a whole, the study reveals a novel, membrane-mediated antioxidant mechanism in neurons by E 2 provides support and mechanistic insights for a "critical period" of E 2 replacement in the hippocampus and demonstrates a heretofore unknown hypersensitivity of the CA3/CA4 to ischemic injury after prolonged hypoestrogenicity.

BackgroundOxidative stress is known to play an important role in the pathology of traumatic brain injury. Mitochondria are thought to be the major source of the damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS) following TBI. However, recent work has revealed that the membrane, via the enzyme NADPH oxidase can also generate the superoxide radical (O2 −), and thereby potentially contribute to the oxidative stress following TBI. The current study thus addressed the potential role of NADPH oxidase in TBI.Methodology/Principal FindingsThe results revealed that NADPH oxidase activity in the cerebral cortex and hippocampal CA1 region increases rapidly following controlled cortical impact in male mice, with an early peak at 1 h, followed by a secondary peak from 24–96 h after TBI. In situ localization using oxidized hydroethidine and the neuronal marker, NeuN, revealed that the O2 − induction occurred in neurons at 1 h after TBI. Pre- or post-treatment with the NADPH oxidase inhibitor, apocynin markedly inhibited microglial activation and oxidative stress damage. Apocynin also attenuated TBI-induction of the Alzheimer's disease proteins β-amyloid and amyloid precursor protein. Finally, both pre- and post-treatment of apocynin was also shown to induce significant neuroprotection against TBI. In addition, a NOX2-specific inhibitor, gp91ds-tat was also shown to exert neuroprotection against TBI.Conclusions/SignificanceAs a whole, the study demonstrates that NADPH oxidase activity and superoxide production exhibit a biphasic elevation in the hippocampus and cortex following TBI, which contributes significantly to the pathology of TBI via mediation of oxidative stress damage, microglial activation, and AD protein induction in the brain following TBI.

Long non-coding RNA H19 (lncRNA H19) was found to be upregulated by hypoxia, its expression and function have never been tested in cerebral ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) injury. This study intended to investigate the role of lncRNA H19 and H19 gene variation in cerebral I/R injury with focusing on its relationship with autophagy activation. Cerebral I/R was induced in rats by middle cerebral artery occlusion followed by reperfusion. SH-SY5Y cells were subjected to oxygen and glucose deprivation and reperfusion (OGD/R) to simulate I/R injury. Real-time PCR, flow cytometry, immunofluorescence and Western blot were used to evaluate the level of lncRNA H19, apoptosis, autophagy and some related proteins. The modified multiple ligase reaction was used to analyze the gene polymorphism of six SNPs in H19, rs217727, rs2067051, rs2251375, rs492994, rs2839698 and rs10732516 in ischemic stroke patients. We found that the expression of lncRNA H19 was upregulated by cerebral I/R in rats, as well as by OGD/R in vitro in the cells. Inhibition of lncRNA H19 and autophagy protected cells from OGD/R-induced death, respectively. Autophagy activation induced by OGD/R was prevented by H19 siRNA. Autophagy inducer, rapamycin, abolished lncRNA H19 effect. Furthermore, we found that lncRNA H19 inhibited autophagy through DUSP5-ERK1/2 axis. The result from blood samples of ischemic patients revealed that the variation of H19 gene increased the risk of ischemic stroke. Taken together, the results of present study suggest that LncRNA H19 could be a new therapeutic target of ischemic stroke.

Recent work suggests that timing of 17β-estradiol (E2) therapy may be critical for observing a beneficial neural effect. Along these lines, E2 neuroprotection, but not its uterotropic effect, was shown to be lost following long-term E2 deprivation (LTED), and this effect was associated with a significant decrease of estrogen receptor-α (ERα) in the hippocampus but not the uterus. The purpose of the current study was to determine the mechanism underlying the ERα decrease and to determine whether aging leads to a similar loss of hippocampal ERα and E2 sensitivity. The results of the study show that ERα in the rat hippocampal CA1 region but not the uterus undergoes enhanced interaction with the E3 ubiquitin ligase C terminus of heat shock cognate protein 70 (Hsc70)-interacting protein (CHIP) that leads to its ubiquitination/proteasomal degradation following LTED (10-wk ovariectomy). E2 treatment initiated before but not after LTED prevented the enhanced ERα-CHIP interaction and ERα ubiquitination/degradation and was fully neuroprotective against global cerebral ischemia. Administration of a proteasomal inhibitor or CHIP antisense oligonucleotides to knock down CHIP reversed the LTED-induced down-regulation of ERα. Further work showed that these observations extended to natural aging, because aged rats showed enhanced CHIP interaction; ubiquitination and degradation of both hippocampal ERα and ERβ; and, importantly, a correlated loss of E2 neuroprotection against global cerebral ischemia. In contrast, E2 administration to middle-aged rats was still capable of exerting neuroprotection. As a whole, the study provides support for a "critical period" for E2 neuroprotection of the hippocampus and provides important insight into the mechanism underlying the critical period.estradiol | neuroendocrine | steroid | stroke B asic science and clinical observation studies have provided evidence of a beneficial effect of 17β-estradiol (E2) on cardiovascular disease, neuroprotection, and neurodegenerative diseases such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease (1-6). However, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) surprisingly failed to observe a protective effect of hormone therapy on the cardiovascular system and, in fact, reported a small but significant increase in risk for stroke and dementia (7-9). The average age of subjects in the WHI study was 63 y, far past the onset of menopause. It has been suggested that there may be a "critical period" for the beneficial protective effect of E2 on the brain and that estrogen may need to be administered at perimenopause or earlier to observe a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular and neural system (10-12). In support of a critical period hypothesis for E2 beneficial effects in the brain, work by our laboratory and others has shown that long-term E2 deprivation (LTED) leads to a loss of E2 neuroprotection in animal models of focal and global cerebral ischemia (GCI) (13,14). Intriguingly, recent work by our group showed that the loss of E2 neuroprotection of the hippocampal CA1 region, an area ...

Tooth agenesis (TA) is one of the most common developmental anomalies that affects the number of teeth. An extensive analysis of publicly accessible databases revealed 15 causative genes responsible for nonsyndromic TA, along with their signaling pathways in Wnt/β-catenin, TGF-β/BMP, and Eda/Edar/NF-κB. However, genotype-phenotype correlation analysis showed that most of the causal genes are also responsible for syndromic TA or other conditions. In a total of 198 different mutations of the 15 genes responsible for nonsyndromic TA, 182 mutations (91.9%) are derived from seven genes (AXIN2, EDA, LRP6, MSX1, PAX9, WNT10A, and WNT10B) compared with the remaining 16 mutations (8.1%) identified in the remaining eight genes (BMP4, DKK1, EDAR, EDARADD, GREM2, KREMEN1, LTBP3, and SMOC2). Furthermore, specificity analysis in terms of the ratio of nonsyndromic TA mutations versus syndromic mutations in each of the aforementioned seven genes showed a 98.2% specificity rate in PAX9, 58.9% in WNT10A, 56.6% in MSX1, 41.2% in WNT10B, 31.4% in LRP6, 23.8% in AXIN2%, and 8.4% in EDA. These findings underscore an important role of the Wnt and Wnt-associated pathways in the genetic etiology of this heterozygous disease and shed new lights on the discovery of novel molecular mechanisms associated with tooth agenesis.