Karoline Degenhardt

University Medical Center Hamburg - Eppendorf · Department of Neurology

Aggregates of medin amyloid (a fragment of the protein MFG-E8, also known as lactadherin) are found in the vasculature of almost all humans over 50 years of age1,2, making it the most common amyloid currently known. We recently reported that medin also aggregates in blood vessels of ageing wild-type mice, causing cerebrovascular dysfunction³. Here...

Background Lymphocytes have dichotomous functions in ischemic stroke. Regulatory T cells are protective, while IL-17A from innate lymphocytes promotes the infarct growth. With recent advances of T cell-subtype specific transgenic mouse models it now has become possible to study the complex interplay of T cell subpopulations in ischemic stroke. Met...

Background: Lymphocytes have dichotomous functions in ischemic stroke. Regulatory T cells are protective, while IL-17A from innate lymphocytes promotes the infarcts growth. With recent advances of T cell-subtype specific transgenic mouse models it now has become possible to study the complex interplay of T cell subpopulations in ischemic stroke. Me...

The most common human amyloid is probably medin (AMed), which deposits in the aorta of nearly everyone above 50 years of age. Previous studies reported that medin amyloid may co‐aggregate and seed serum amyloid A. Because of this finding and its exceedingly high prevalence in the aging population, we studied whether medin aggregates form in the bra...

Medin is the most common amyloid known in humans, as it can be found in blood vessels of the upper body in virtually everybody over 50 years of age. However, it remains unknownwhether deposition of Medin plays a causal role in age-related vascular dysfunction. We now report that aggregates of Medin also develop in the aorta and brain vasculature of...

Innate immune memory is a vital mechanism of myeloid cell plasticity that occurs in response to environmental stimuli and alters subsequent immune responses. Two types of immunological imprinting can be distinguished-training and tolerance. These are epigenetically mediated and enhance or suppress subsequent inflammation, respectively. Whether immu...

Immune cells of myeloid lineage are encountered in the Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain, where they cluster around amyloid-β plaques. However, assigning functional roles to myeloid cell subtypes has been problematic, and the potential for peripheral myeloid cells to alleviate AD pathology remains unclear. Therefore, we asked whether replacement of br...

Cerebral β-amyloidosis is induced by inoculation of Aβ seeds into APP transgenic mice, but not into App(-/-) (APP null) mice. We found that brain extracts from APP null mice that had been inoculated with Aβ seeds up to 6 months previously still induced β-amyloidosis in APP transgenic hosts following secondary transmission. Thus, Aβ seeds can persis...

The hydrogen isotope ratio (HIR) of body water and, therefore, of all endogenously synthesized compounds in humans, is mainly affected by the HIR of ingested drinking water. As a consequence, the entire organism and all of its synthesized substrates will reflect alterations in the isotope ratio of drinking water, which depends on the duration of ex...