The world's first wiki where authorship really matters (Nature Genetics, 2008). Due credit and reputation for authors. Imagine a global collaborative knowledge base for original thoughts. Search thousands of articles and collaborate with scientists around the globe.

wikigene or wiki gene protein drug chemical gene disease author authorship tracking collaborative publishing evolutionary knowledge reputation system wiki2.0 global collaboration genes proteins drugs chemicals diseases compound

Hoffmann, R. A wiki for the life sciences where authorship matters. Nature Genetics (2008)

[search][options]

Editor

Personal info

View

About

Terms

Javascript disabled

Please enable Javascript support in your browser to use this application.

Instructions on how to enable JavaScript on different browsers can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23852.

[edit this page]

Little, K.Y. et al.

Little, Krolewski, Zhang, Cassin,

Loss of striatal vesicular monoamine transporter protein (VMAT2) in human cocaine users.

OBJECTIVE: The hypothesis that human cocaine users lose vesicular monoamine transporter (VMAT2) protein was tested in striatal samples from cocaine users and age-, sex-, and postmortem interval-matched comparison subjects. METHOD: Striatal samples were retrieved at autopsy; immunoblot assays were then performed by using a highly specific VMAT2 antibody. Striatal radioligand binding to VMAT2 was assessed with dihydrotetrabenazine ([(3)H]DTBZ) and dopamine levels employing high-performance liquid chromatography. RESULTS: Cocaine users displayed a marked reduction in VMAT2 immunoreactivity as well as reduced [(3)H]DTBZ binding and dopamine levels. It did not appear that the reduction in VMAT2 immunoreactivity was related to ethanol use, but dopamine levels were lower in subjects with only ethanol diagnoses. Subjects suffering from cocaine-induced mood disorders displayed a greater loss of VMAT2 immunoreactivity that approached significance. CONCLUSIONS: Human cocaine users lose VMAT2 protein, which might reflect damage to striatal dopamine fibers. These neuronal changes could play a role in causing disordered mood and motivational processes in more severely dependent patients.[1]

References

Loss of striatal vesicular monoamine transporter protein (VMAT2) in human cocaine users. Little, K.Y., Krolewski, D.M., Zhang, L., Cassin, B.J. The American journal of psychiatry. (2003) [Pubmed]

Annotations and hyperlinks in this abstract are from individual authors of WikiGenes or automatically generated by the WikiGenes Data Mining Engine. The abstract is from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.About WikiGenes Open Access Licence Privacy Policy Terms of Use apsburg