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The Role of the Occupational Therapist in the Treatment of Patients with Huntington's Disease
Sýkorová, Jitka ; Čábelková, Alžběta (advisor) ; Dlouhá Maršálková, Alexandra (referee)
The Role of the Occupational Therapist in the Treatment of Patients with Huntington's Disease Abstract: This thesis is focused on the possible potential of occupational therapy in patients with Huntington's disease, a neurodegenerative brain disease. Currently, Huntington's disease is incurable, but there are some therapeutic methods and approaches which have positive influence on a progress of the disease. Also, early intervention of occupational therapy is needed and the occupational therapist is an irreplaceable specialist as a part of an interdisciplinary team. However, in the Czech Republic there is a little experience with occupational therapy in patients with Huntington's disease. The thesis consists of a theoretical part and a practical part. The theoretical part provides basic information about the condition and by having used specialized foreign literature it also focuses on the opportunities and goals of occupational therapy in patients with Huntington's disease. In the practical part, questionnaires which were distributed among patients and patient care providers were evaluated. Results of the questionnaires provide besides other things a brief outline of patient's problematic areas. Occupational therapy evaluation of patients with Huntington's disease includes the Montreal Cognitive Assessment...
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Pathogenesis of Huntington's disease in peripheral tissues
Vachútová, Dominika ; Motlík, Jan (advisor) ; Fiala, Ondřej (referee)
Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant inherited disorder with manifest of symptoms around the age of 40. This disorder is caused by an expansion of CAG repeats in huntingtin gene, Huntingtin (Htt) is a protein expressed in almost all tissues. HD is mainly characterized by neurodegeneration in the basal ganglia and cerebral cortex, but mutation in huntingtin have also serious influence on peripheral tissues. Many studies show serious heart dysfunction, weight loss, altered glucose homeostasis, impairment of energetic metabolism and muscular atrophy in HD patients and animal models. Till now, mechanism of these changes has not been sufficiently described and there is nor an adequate treatment yet. Key words: Huntington's disease, mutated huntingtin, CAG repeat, peripheral tissue
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DNA damage response in Huntington disease
Vachová, Veronika ; Šolc, Petr (advisor) ; Roth, Jan (referee)
Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder, which leads to loss of striatal neurons in basal ganglias. It is characterized by involuntary movements and progressive cognitive impairment. HD is a relatively rare disease and the prevalence is approximately 0,01 % of the population of Western European. HD is caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene (HTT). This mutation results in an elongated stretch of glutamin. Mutant huntingtin (mHTT) expression leads to accumulation of DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) due to reduced ability of effective reparation, which contributes to the pathogenesis of HD, however this mechanism is not fully understood. There are several angles of view how mHTT impaires DNA damage response (DDR). Some studies say that the expression of the mHTT initiates excessive activation of the DDR including p53 signaling pathway leading to apoptosis. Other studies represent results for dysfunction of non-homologous end joining after recognition of DSB or that the cell is not able to recognize DSB. All theories would explain cell death as a consequence of high level of unrepaired DNA damage. The understanding of these mechanisms is important for the development of therapeutical strategies. Key words: Huntington's disease, huntingtin, DNA...
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Interplay between mutated huntingtin and precancerogenous status in mammalian cells.
Butalová, Nikola ; Baxa, Monika (advisor) ; Koudelková, Lenka (referee)
Huntington's disease is a serious hereditary disorder that causes mortification of neurons. The disease affects individuals around the age of 40. Its characteristics are involuntary movement of the limbs and a progressive dementia. This disorder is currently without any treatment and always ends with patient dying within a period of 15 years after the first symptoms are discovered. Special relation between Huntington's disease and malign neoplasia was observed at the end of the 20th century. This relation shows lower degree of cancer among the patients with this neurodegenerative disorder compared to the general population. An expanded sequence of a CAG section probably protects these persons against advancement of cancer. Creation of an applicable experimental model with characteristic highly resembling human body was necessary for superior research of this disease. This model can be represented by a transgene mini pig carrying a mutated protein huntingtin - tgHD pig. Another model of a mini-pig showing hereditary occurrence of malign lesions - MeLiM pig was created to research cancer. These two specific lines of mini-pigs were crossbred resulting in not only piglets with melanoma and transgene piglets with mtHTT but also transgene piglets having melanoma at the same time. Furthermore the same...
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Modelovanie ochorenia a štúdium regeneračných procesov v Huntingtonovej chorobe a ALS in vivo
Hruška-Plocháň, Marián
Neurological disorders affect more than 14% of the population worldwide and together with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries represent major health, public and economic burden of the society. Incidence of inherited and idiopathic neurodegenerative disorders and acute CNS injuries is growing globally while neuroscience society is being challenged by numerous unanswered questions. Therefore, research of the CNS disorders is essential. Since animal models of the CNS diseases and injuries represent the key step in the conversion of the basic research to the clinics, we focused our work on generation of new animal models and on their use in pre-clinical research. We generated and characterized transgenic minipig model of Huntington's disease (HD) which represents the only successful establishment of a transgenic model of HD in minipig which should be valuable for testing of long term safety of HD therapeutics. Next, we crossed the well characterized R6/2 mouse HD model with the gad mouse model which lacks the expression of UCHL1 which led to results that support the theory of "protective" role of mutant huntingtin aggregates and suggest that UCHL1 function(s) may be affected in HD disturbing certain branches of Ubiquitin Proteasome System. Traumatic spinal cord injury and Amyotrophic Lateral...
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Role of modified autophagosomal function in patophysiology of Huntington's disease.
Kotrčová, Eva ; Motlík, Jan (advisor) ; Sládková, Jana (referee)
Huntington's disease, an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease, affects the cell in several toxical ways. One of them is accumulation of protein aggregates in cytoplasma, which could become a serious problem especially for long-lived cells such as neurons. Autophagy (macroautophagy) is an important catabolic pathway, crucial for cell survival. If fully functional, it should eliminate protein aggregates and reduce the toxic effect on the cell. However, recent works show that this pathway might be defective, most probably in the cytoplasmic cargo recognition. In my work I used a transgenic miniature pig model of Huntington's disease to verify the hypothesis of autophagical dysfunction in individuals suffering from Huntington's disease. I studied levels of autophagosomal markers - LC3 and p62 in mesenchymal stem cells after different autophagy stimulation treatments, and ammonium chloride was found the most effective. In addition I evaluated the effect of age of the animals on autophagic function, but no significant changes were identified, even if animal genotype was considered. Moreover I had an opportunity to study proteins levels in three porcine brain tissues - cortex, cerebellum and striatum. Even though there is no significant diference, we can observe a trend of LC3 II and p62 increase in...
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Generation of porcine induced pluripotent stem cells - a model of Huntington disease.
Svobodová, Eliška ; Motlík, Jan (advisor) ; Fulka, Josef (referee)
Stable porcine ES cell lines have not been succesfully established yet. Ability to selfrenew or to differentiate has been limited in different porcine ES-like cell lines so far. PiPSCs represent an alternative to pESCs. PiPSCs can be generated by reprogramming of somatic cells by introduction of several transcription factors on viral vectors and were established by several groups. However, the majority of piPS cell lines depend on transgene expression because of incomplete reprogramming and weak activation of endogenous pluripotency genes. Transgene expression can infuence differentiation potential of piPSCs. Therefore, we have used integrative and reexcisable PiggyBac transposons to generate viral free piPSCs. At the same time, small molecules (low-molecular inhibitors) with potential to increase reprogramming efficiency and to activate endogenous pluripotency genes were used in the reprogramming media. This strategy has a potential for generation of naive piPSCs. Successful excision of transgenes would generate transgene-free piPSCs with uncompromised differentiation potential. Pig (Sus Scrofa) is at the same time an important animal model in preclinical stage research of the diseases. Somatic cells used for generation of piPSCs were isolated from pigs carrying mutated huntingtin. Integration of the...
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Changes in beta-catenin expression during ontogenesis in the transgenic minipigs for human mutant huntingtin
Žižková, Martina ; Motlík, Jan (advisor) ; Jarkovská, Karla (referee)
Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by an unstable expansion of the CAG repeat sequence within the huntingtin gene. Huntingtin associates with ubiquitin-proteasome system that ensures degradation of particular proteins including β-catenin which is an important molecule whose equilibrated degradation is necessary for the proper functioning of the Wnt signaling pathway. The binding of β-catenin to the destruction complex is altered in HD, leading to the toxic stabilization of β-catenin. The main goal of my thesis was to determine whether the accumulation of β-catenin due to the presence of mutant huntingtin is also characteristic of Liběchov minipigs, a large animal model of Huntington's disease stably expressing N-truncated human mutant huntingtin. Using immunoblot and specific antibodies, we have revealed age-dependent accumulation of mutant huntingtin in transgenic minipigs. Unlike endogenous huntingtin, no decrease of the level of mutant huntingtin was observed in the striatum of transgenic animals. Surprisingly, this was followed by a decrease of phosphorylated β-catenin. Nevertheless, our results demostrate the accumulation of β-catenin in mesenchymal stem cells isolated from the oldest boars during ontogenesis. Furthermore, we have revealed a...
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Huntington's disease modeling and stem cell therapy in spinal cord disorders and injury
Hruška-Plocháň, Marián ; Motlík, Jan (advisor) ; Bjarkam, Carsten (referee) ; Roth, Jan (referee)
Neurological disorders affect more than 14% of the population worldwide and together with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries represent major health, public and economic burden of the society. Incidence of inherited and idiopathic neurodegenerative disorders and acute CNS injuries is growing globally while neuroscience society is being challenged by numerous unanswered questions. Therefore, research of the CNS disorders is essential. Since animal models of the CNS diseases and injuries represent the key step in the conversion of the basic research to the clinics, we focused our work on generation of new animal models and on their use in pre-clinical research. We generated and characterized transgenic minipig model of Huntington's disease (HD) which represents the only successful establishment of a transgenic model of HD in minipig which should be valuable for testing of long term safety of HD therapeutics. Next, we crossed the well characterized R6/2 mouse HD model with the gad mouse model which lacks the expression of UCHL1 which led to results that support the theory of "protective" role of mutant huntingtin aggregates and suggest that UCHL1 function(s) may be affected in HD disturbing certain branches of Ubiquitin Proteasome System. Traumatic spinal cord injury and Amyotrophic Lateral...
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