Problems concerning multi-element assay in biological materials

Gallium

“…Levels up tõ 100 mg kg À1 have been reported in marine fish (Bowen 1979). The gallium content in healthy human tissues (mg kg À1 ) has been reported as: plasma, 0.1; liver, 0.7 -1; brain, 0.6; kidney, 0.9; lung, 5; lymph node, 7; muscle, 0.3; testis, 0.9; and ovary, 2 (Lange 1973, Hamilton et al 1972/1973.…”

Sampling and sample preparation

“…By the early and mid seventies, the exclusive use of Teflon, polyethylene and synthetic quartz were established to be the materials of choice for sample containment [37,38,65,96,107,131]. In 1968, Robertson [ 1081 produces an impressive amount of data for 10 trace elements in a wide variety of container materials and structural materials.…”

Neocortical levels of lithium are increased in bipolar disorder

“…2,3 Although a neurological function for lithium was first proposed over 60 years ago based on its anti-manic properties, 2 surprisingly, a significant pool of lithium has never been identified in the brain. 4,5 In this study, with quadrupole inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy, lithium is identified as a physiological trace element in the human neocortex. Moreover, cortical levels of lithium are found to be elevated in bipolar subjects with no past history of lithium pharmacotherapy.…”

“…We analyzed expression profiles of lymphoblast cell lines from 64 XLID patients, including 13 cases that were part of a recent X-chromosome exon re-sequencing study 5 (Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 1). We found polyglutamine-binding protein 1 (PQBP1), a gene previously implicated in XLID, 6,7 to be significantly downregulated in two cases (Supplementary Table 2), and confirmed an exon 4 (AG)2 deletion as the cause of mRNA downregulation in both instances.…”