Dr. Aimin Bao/'s group published in Cerebral Cortex

Shang-Feng Gao, Xin-Rui Qi, Juan Zhao, Rawien Balesar, Ai-Min Bao* and Dick F. Swaab. Decreased NOS1 Expression in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Depression. Cerebral Cortex 2013; 23: 2956–2964.

Abstract :

Decreased function of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is crucially involved in the pathogenesis of depression. A key role of nitric oxide (NO) has also been proposed. We aimed to determine the NO content in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the expression of NO synthase (NOS) isoforms, that is, NOS1, NOS2, and NOS3 in the ACC in depression. The postmortem brain material was obtained from the Netherlands Brain Bank. In depressive patients, CSF-NO levels were found to be significantly decreased, indicating a more general decrease of NO production in this disorder. This agreed with a trend toward lower NOS1-mRNA levels and a significant decrease of NOS-ir in ACC. In controls, there was a significant positive correlation between ACC-NOS1-ir cell densities and their CSF-NO levels. Furthermore, both localization of NOS1 in pyramidal neurons that are known to be glutamatergic and co-localization between NOS1 and GABAergic neurons were observed in human ACC. The diminished ACC-NOS1 expression and decreased CSF-NOx levels may be involved in the alterations of ACC activity in depression, possibly by affecting glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission.