Jayarjun Ethiraj, Thulani H. Palpagama, Clinton Turner, Bert van der Werf, Henry J. Waldvogel, Richard L.M. Faull, Andrea Kwakowsky have published a paper in Scientific Reports entitled, ‘The effect of age and sex on the expression of GABA signaling components in the human hippocampus and entorhinal cortex’.
The first author of the article is Jayarjun Ethiraj. He is a second year PhD student and he has completed a Master’s degree at the Centre for Brain Research, Department of Anatomy and Medical Imaging. Jayarjun Ethiraj and Thulani Palpagama (PhD candidate) are supervised by Dr Andrea Kwakowsky and co-supervised by Distinguished Professor Sir Richard Faull and Associate Professor Henry Waldvogel.
The hippocampus is the memory centre of the brain and is impaired in several age-related disorders. It is composed of two main regions: the Cornu Ammonis and the Dentate Gyrus, which are interconnected with the Entorhinal Cortex. This study is the first to determine the effect of age and sex on the expression of GABA signaling components, the critically important inhibitory neurotransmitter system, in these regions of the human brain.
The teams findings provide evidence that the expression of the GABAergic signaling components are mostly robust to age and sex-related changes. However, the observed age-related sex-specific alterations in GABAR subunit levels cannot be underestimated as they might significantly influence hippocampal GABAergic neurotransmission and cognitive function. Further research will be important to shed light on the implications of age- and sex-related GABAergic alterations in disease conditions to design improved and more effective personalized treatments.
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