Biophysical Studies of Erythrocyte Membranes in Huntington's Disease

Spin Label Study of Red Blood Cell Membranes in Huntington’s Disease

“…18] who, in similar ESR studies, found no significant differences between patients and controls. Unlike these other studies, our re sults in their mean values, standard devia tions and numbers of persons for study are strictly comparable with the analogous pa rameters of Butterfield et al [5][6][7][8][9][10][11], Our re sults make us doubt whether ESR studies can support the generalized membrane defect theory.…”

“…data] and obtained differences like those of Butter field et al [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], The present work which aimed to increase precision and therefore re duce the overlap in patient and control val ues leads us to the conclusion that the differ ences that we observed between patient and control spectra were due to systematic errors in the form of time differences between col lecting the blood and preparing the ghosts, time differences which were larger for pa tients than for controls.…”

“…Butterfield & t al. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] have, on several occa sions, reported a significant difference be tween ESR spectra of erythrocyte ghosts from HD patients and controls; even in each of the separate experiments of Butterfield et al [6] the w/s value for the HD patient was higher than the value for the corresponding control. However, we were not able to find any statis tically valid differences between the two groups.…”

“…[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] wc used MAL-6 as spin label. All chemicals were of the highest purity available.…”

“…This w/s ratio was the parameter Butter field et al [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] found to be significantly higher in spectra from HD patients than in those of controls.…”