TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schiele, Miriam A.
A1  - Ziegler, Christiane
A1  - Kollert, Leonie
A1  - Katzorke, Andrea
A1  - Schartner, Christoph
A1  - Busch, Yasmin
A1  - Gromer, Daniel
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Pauli, Paul
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Herrmann, Martin J.
A1  - Domschke, Katharina
T1  - Plasticity of Functional MAOA Gene Methylation in Acrophobia
JF  - International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
N2  - Epigenetic mechanisms have been proposed to mediate fear extinction in animal models. Here, MAOA methylation was analyzed via direct sequencing of sodium bisulfite-treated DNA extracted from blood cells before and after a 2-week exposure therapy in a sample of n = 28 female patients with acrophobia as well as in n = 28 matched healthy female controls. Clinical response was measured using the Acrophobia Questionnaire and the Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire. The functional relevance of altered MAOA methylation was investigated by luciferase-based reporter gene assays. MAOA methylation was found to be significantly decreased in patients with acrophobia compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, MAOA methylation levels were shown to significantly increase after treatment and correlate with treatment response as reflected by decreasing Acrophobia Questionnaire/Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire scores. Functional analyses revealed decreased reporter gene activity in presence of methylated compared with unmethylated pCpGfree_MAOA reporter gene vector constructs. The present proof-of-concept psychotherapy-epigenetic study for the first time suggests functional MAOA methylation changes as a potential epigenetic correlate of treatment response in acrophobia and fosters further investigation into the notion of epigenetic mechanisms underlying fear extinction.
KW  - monoamine oxidase A
KW  - anxiety
KW  - extinction
KW  - epigenetics
KW  - DNA methylation
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-228571
VL  - 21
IS  - 9
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Katzorke, Andrea
A1  - Zeller, Julia B. M.
A1  - Müller, Laura D.
A1  - Lauer, Martin
A1  - Polak, Thomas
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Herrmann, Martin J.
T1  - Reduced activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus in elderly APOE-E4 carriers during a verbal fluency task
JF  - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
N2  - Apolipoprotein-E4 (APOE-E4) is a major genetic risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The verbal fluency task (VFT), especially the subtask category fluency, has shown to provide a good discrimination between cognitively normal controls and subjects with AD. Interestingly, APOE-E4 seems to have no effect on the behavioral performance during a VFT in healthy elderly. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to reveal possible compensation mechanisms by investigating the effect of APOE-E4 on the hemodynamic response in non-demented elderly during a VFT by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). We compared performance and hemodynamic response of high risk APOE-E4/E4, -E3/E4 carriers with neutral APOE-E3/E3 non-demented subjects (N = 288; 70–77 years). No difference in performance was found. APOE-E4/E4, -E3/E4 carriers had a decreased hemodynamic response in the right inferior frontal junction (IFJ) with a corresponding higher response in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) during category fluency. Performance was correlated with the hemodynamic response in the MFG. We assume a compensation of decreased IFJ brain activation by utilizing the MFG during category fluency and thus resulting in no behavioral differences between APOE-groups during the performance of a VFT.
KW  - psychiatry
KW  - near-infrared spectroscopy
KW  - verbal fluency task
KW  - apolipoprotein-E4
KW  - Alzheimer's disease
KW  - elderly
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-171892
VL  - 11
ER  -