Ribosomal DNA transcription is increased in the left nucleus accumbens of heroin-dependent males.
Tomasz GosJohann SteinerKurt TrübnerMarta KrzyżanowskaMichał KaliszanPublished in: European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience (2022)
Opioid addiction is a worldwide problem accentuated in the USA and European countries by the COVID-19 pandemic. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) plays an outstanding neurobiological role in opioid addiction as a part of the striatum and key component of brain reward system. The striatal GABAergic medium spiny projection neurons (MSNs) are the main neuronal type in the NAc where addiction-specific synaptic plasticity occurs. The activity of ribosomal DNA (rDNA) transcription is crucial for neural plasticity and molecular studies suggest its increase in the NAc of heroin addicts. Silver-stained argyrophilic nucleolar organizer region (AgNOR) areas visualised in neuronal nuclei in paraffin-embedded brain sections are reliable morphological estimators of rDNA transcription and thus surrogate markers for the activity of brain regions. Our study revealed increased AgNOR areas in MSNs of the left NAc in 11 heroin addicts versus 11 healthy controls from the Magdeburg Brain Bank (U-test P = 0.007). No differences were observed in another investigated part of the striatum, namely the head of caudate nucleus, which is located closely to the NAc. The results were not confounded by significant differences in the age, brain volume and time of formalin fixation existing between compared groups. Our findings suggest an increased NAc activity in heroin addicts, which is consistent with human and animal experimental data.
Keyphrases
- transcription factor
- resting state
- white matter
- cerebral ischemia
- functional connectivity
- chronic pain
- genome wide analysis
- endothelial cells
- single molecule
- cell free
- magnetic resonance imaging
- machine learning
- circulating tumor
- multiple sclerosis
- computed tomography
- blood brain barrier
- big data
- high resolution
- spinal cord injury
- parkinson disease
- prefrontal cortex
- image quality
- optical coherence tomography
- artificial intelligence
- silver nanoparticles
- data analysis
- deep learning
- case control