The production of extracellular vesicles (EV) is a ubiquitous feature of eukaryotic cells but pathological events can affect their formation and constituents. We sought to characterize the nature, profile and protein signature of EV in the plasma of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and how they correlate to clinical measures of the disease. EVs were initially collected from cohorts of PD (n=60; Controls, n=37) and Huntington's disease (HD) patients (Pre-manifest, n=11; manifest, n=52; Controls, n=55)-for comparative purposes in patients with another chronic neurodegenerative condition-and exhaustively analyzed using flow cytometry, electron microscopy and proteomics. We then collected 42 samples from an additional independent cohort of PD patients to confirm our initial results. Through a series of iterative steps, we optimized an approach for defining the EV signature in PD. We found that the number of EV derived specifically from erythrocytes segregated with UPDRS scores corresponding to different disease stages. Proteomic analysis further revealed that there is a specific signature of proteins that could reliably differentiate control subjects from mild and moderate PD patients. Taken together, we have developed an EV blood-based assay that has the potential to be used as a biomarker for PD.
We report an ultrasonic study of the magneto-elastic coupling of the spin-density wave antiferromagnet CaFe4As3. Longitudinal waves propagating along the a axis reveal anomalies on the acoustic velocity at both the incommensurate (ICM) (TN1 = 89.3 K) and commensurate (CM) (TN2 = 26.3 K) spin-density phases, which are consistent with the magnetic structure established from neutron diffraction experiments. Moreover, at higher temperatures, magnetic fluctuations are likely responsible for a reduced stiffening of the velocity below 150 K. Although the ICM phase appears elastically inhomogeneous below 50 K, a precise magnetic field dependence of the ICM-CM transition at TN2 specifies a preferential orientation of the in-plane easy and hard axes respectively parallel and perpendicular to the vectord (â ·d = cos 30• ). Within the CM phase, a magnetic field aligned along the ribbon b axis reveals a new magnetic transition of the spin-flop type near 16 teslas. For this particular field direction a phase diagram is proposed.
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