| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The expression of tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins was investigated in involuted thymuses or stressed rats as well as those of abused children. Tyrosine phosphorylation signaling has been shown to be important for various functions of thymic cells. Their expression was found to be remarkably reduced in the involuted thymus compared with the control by immunobot analysis. In involuted thymuses from abused children, the tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins were found by immunohistochemical methods to be localized in Hassall's corpuscles, where JAK and src-family tyrosine kinases are also abundantly expressed, and Hassall's corpuscles were reduced in size. Because the signal transduction pathway through these tyrosine kinases are well known to play important roles for cytokine-mediated intracellular signaling in thymic cells, we examined whether some cytokines are a possible molecular marker for involuted thymuses from stressed rats as well as abused children. Serum, IL2 levels were measured and found to be decreased by 30 % in stressed rats compared with controls. However, the significant difference of serum IL2 levels were not detected between abused and control children from autopsied cases. Because serum IL2 showed very low levels even in the serum from control cases, the results may be due to the postmortum degradation of IL2. Thus, these findings suggest that measurement of cytokines are not useful for the diagnosis of autopsied cases but may be useful for that of alive cases of abused children.
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