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Notes: Objectives:  Cyclosporin A (CsA) is known to elicit fibrous gingival overgrowth with changes of blood vessel profiles. In this study, we examined the expression of several angiogenic and angiostatic genes during the development of CsA-induced gingival overgrowth.Methods:  For the development of gingival overgrowth, Sprague-Dawley rats received subcutaneous injections of CsA in daily doses of 5, 10, 15 mg/kg body weight for 6 weeks, and another group received 10 mg/kg of CsA for 3, 6, and 12 weeks. Human gingival tissues were obtained from three CsA-treated patients following the gingivectomy procedure and from three healthy patients following the crown-lengthening procedure as a control. Gingival fibroblasts were isolated from the healthy gingival tissues of the rat or the human, and cultured with 250–1000 ng/ml of CsA.Results:  Reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT–PCR) analyses showed that expressions of some angiogenic genes such as angiopoietin 1, basic fibroblast growth factor, and vascular endothelial growth factor, and angiostatic genes such as angiopoietin 2, brain-specific angiogenesis inhibitor 1 and 2, and thrombospondin 1 were not changed significantly in both gingival tissues and cultured fibroblast cells under the CsA treatments. However, expression of thrombospondin 2 (TSP2) decreased dose- and time-dependently in rat and human gingival tissues. Western blot analyses showed that the expression of TSP2 protein was dose-dependently reduced by the CsA treatments in human cultured gingival fibroblasts.Conclusions:  These results indicate that the decrease in angiostatic TSP2 expression may be attributed to the CsA-induced gingival vascularization rather than to the increased expression of angiogenic genes. It suggests that TSP2 is involved in the development of CsA-induced gingival overgrowth with the gingival vascularization.

Notes: Abstract. An automated voxel-based analysis of brain images using statistical parametric mapping (SPM) is accepted as a standard approach in the analysis of activation studies in positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. This study aimed to investigate whether or not SPM would increase the diagnostic yield of ictal brain single-photon emission tomography (SPET) in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Twenty-one patients (age 27.14±5.79 years) with temporal lobe epilepsy (right in 8, left in 13) who had a successful seizure outcome after surgery and nine normal subjects were included in the study. The data of ictal and interictal brain SPET of the patients and baseline SPET of the normal control group were analysed using SPM96 software. The t statistic SPM{t} was transformed to SPM{Z} with various thresholds of P〈0.05, 0.005 and 0.001, and corrected extent threshold P value of 0.05. The SPM data were compared with the conventional ictal and interictal subtraction method. On group comparison, ictal SPET showed increased uptake within the epileptogenic mesial temporal lobe. On single case analysis, ictal SPET images correctly lateralized the epileptogenic temporal lobe in 18 cases, falsely lateralized it in one and failed to lateralize it in two as compared with the mean image of the normal group at a significance level of P〈0.05. Comparing the individual ictal images with the corresponding interictal group, 15 patients were correctly lateralized, one was falsely lateralized and four were not lateralized. At significance levels of P〈0.005 and P〈0.001, correct lateralization of the epileptogenic temporal lobe was achieved in 15 and 13 patients, respectively, as compared with the normal group. On the other hand, when comparison was made with the corresponding interictal group, only 7 out of 21 patients were correctly lateralized at the threshold of P〈0.005 and five at P〈0.001. The result of the subtraction method was close to the single case analysis on SPM at P〈0.05. However, at higher thresholds (P〈0.005 and 0.001) the subtraction method was comparable to the SPM results only when individual ictal images were compared with the normal control group, and not when comparison was with the interictal group. It is concluded that SPM is an alternative diagnostic method for the localization or lateralization of the seizure focus in temporal lobe epilepsy and that interictal SPET could be omitted if a normal brain SPET database were to be established. The medical cost of seizure localization would thereby be reduced.