LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf Hospital of the Heinrich-Heine University ...

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DMSO 10 nM 100 nM 1.000 nM DMSO 10 nM 100 nM 1.000 nM
Acute effects
Project Drug Safety in Gerontopsychiatry
Director: C. Lange-Asschenfeldt
Scientific assistants: P. Görtz, A. Gillmann
Cooperation (internal): J. Cordes
Cooperation (external): R. Grohmann, Ludwig-Maximilian
University, Munich
Drug safety in psychiatry project (“Arzneimittelsicherheit in
der Psychiatrie”, AMSP),
B. Lange-Asschenfeldt, Dermatology, Charité Berlin,
F. Lederbogen, ZI Mannheim
Financing: Foundation for Geriatric Research at the
Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, plus departmental
research budget
Within this thematic area, the working group investigates
the undesired effects of drugs and their preconditions, as
well as general drug safety in older age. Current special
focuses are psychotropic-drug–induced hyponatraemia,
the syndrome of inadequate antidiuretic hormone secretion
and cardiac tolerability of psychotropic drugs. The group
used the database of the clinical laboratory of the LVR-
Klinikum from the years 2003-2006 to identify cases of
hyponatraemia in gerontopsychiatry and general psychiatry
inpatients separately. These data were related to the sample
of all persons treated at the LVR-Klinikum. Based on a
retrospective analysis of case records, risk factors and risk
conditions were determined, including a “risk ranking” of
psychotropic drugs. Besides this project, notifications of
unwanted dermatological drug effects in 1993-2005 from
70 participating psychiatric hospitals and departments in
Germany, Austria and Switzerland (as of December 2008)
were evaluated in the framework of the drug monitoring
project AMSP.
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Effects after 24 hours
ReseaRch
Figure 19: Effects of an amyloidal protein on spontaneous neuronal network
activity in cell cultures (microelectrode array). Left: Significant (*) dosedependent
suppression of spontaneous burst rates after administration of
the amyloidal protein Ab(1-42) to the cell culture medium in concentrations
of 10-1000 nM/L (carrier substance DMSO = control). Right: Reversibility
of the amyloidal-induced suppression of the burst rate after 24 hours.
The system represents a cell culture model for synaptic or network
dysfunctions, including how they could appear in the early stages of
Alzheimer’s; Figure modified after Görtz P et al.: Transient reduction of
spontaneous neuronal network activity by sublethal amyloidal ß (1-42)
concentrations. J Neural Transm (2009) 116: 351-355.
Use of microelectrode arrays with neuronal cell cultures
(mice and rats) in experimental psychiatry
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