As with solitary ICH, hypertension is still the most important etiological factor for simultaneous multiple ICHs. The widespread and prolonged degeneration of intracerebral arterioles predispose patients to the development of multiple ICHs, which could be justified by the longer history of hypertension and higher incidence of former strokes. Only hypercholesterolemia was identified to be significantly associated with this unusual brain event in our study. The mechanism underlying the development of simultaneous multiple ICHs is not clear although structural and haemodynamic changes of first haemorrhage may be responsible for the second one. Poorer outcome in patients with multiple ICHs can be explained by the concomitant destruction of crossing and non-crossing fiber tracts and bilateral diaschisis phenomenon.

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TGM2 regulates ID1 expression in glioma-initiating cell lines high in CD44. Targeting TGM2 could be an effective strategy to treat gliomas with high CD44 expression.

We aimed to determine the severity and pattern of cognitive dysfunction in patients with basal ganglia (BG) hemorrhage within the first 6 months after stroke and to identify its clinical correlates. The study samples consisted of 30 patients with BG hemorrhage and 37 healthy controls. A comprehensive neuropsychological battery including tests of attention, memory, language, visuospatial function, and executive function was administered to all participants. Relative to healthy controls, BG patients performed significantly worse across different cognitive domains after controlling for age, sex, and education. 96.7% of patients displayed defective performance on at least three neuropsychological tests. Discriminant function analysis showed that visuospatial function and memory were the best predictors of group membership (patient/control), with an overall classification rate of 95.5%. Only side of stroke and admission Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score correlated significantly with some of the cognitive domains. The widespread pattern of cognitive deficits seen in BG patients provides evidence for the substantial involvement of the BG in many neuronal pathways connecting cortical and subcortical brain areas responsible for various cognitive functions.

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Overexpression of ERCC1 mRNA is associated with drug resistance to cisplatin in human gliomas, but the role of the ERCC1 promoter in drug resistance has not been demonstrated. We have used sodium bisulfite sequencing to compare ERCC1 promoter methylation patterns in cisplatin-sensitive and cisplatin-resistant glioma cells. The levels of ERCC1 DNA methylation, mRNA and protein in 32 human glioma samples were examined by methylation specific PCR, real-time RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry, respectively. Meanwhile, cisplatin sensitivities to these human glioma samples were tested by histoculture drug response assay. Hypermethylation was observed in the upstream 5Kb region of the ERCC1 promoter of cisplatin-sensitive glioma cell lines. ERCC1 DNA methylation levels were highly variable in 32 human glioma samples ranging from 0.1 to 0.87, which have shown significant difference between cisplatin-sensitive samples and cisplatin-resistant samples (p < 0.05). The relative expression levels of ERCC1 mRNA in 32 glioma samples were also variable from 0.01 to 5.71. No detectable or low expression of ERCC1 protein was shown in 7 glioma samples. ERCC1 promoter methylation was inversely correlated to mRNA expression (r 5 20.903 p 5 0.001) as well as protein expression (r 5 20.884 p 5 0.001). Moreover, ERCC1 mRNA expression was significantly associated with protein levels (r 5 0.840 p 5 0.001). In summary, the aberrant CpG island methylation in ERCC1 promoter region exists in human glioma cell lines as well as clinical glioma samples. ERCC1 DNA methylation could regulate the expression of downstream mRNA and protein, and was associated with cisplatin chemosensitivity.