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Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome

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Progeria, which is also known as Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome, is a rare genetic disorder where dramatic, premature aging occurs in children. Children with Progeria are born looking normal. However between 10 to 24 months of age signs of accelerated aging start to appear, such as slow growth, protruding eyes and prominent scalp veins. As the child develops, they are characterized by a very short stature, low body weight, early loss of hair, lipodystrophy, scleroderma and decreased joint mobility. Their facial features also resemble that of an aged person. (c) These children generally die in their teens, commonly by age 13, predominantly due to cardiovascular complications related to atherosclerosis.(b) Progeria is mainly caused by a …show more content…
None of the control founders showed any pathological changes in any tissue, except for possibly very mild fragments of elastin and occasionally small foci of proteoglycan (PG) deposition in the medial layer of large vessels at advanced ages. Also sections of airtime carotid artery and iliac artery were stained with hematoxylin/eosin and Movat’s pentachrome stains. In the G608G mice, there was found to be a progressive loss of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC), elastic finer breakage, thickening of the adventitia and medial layer, accumulation of PGs, and collagen position. This incident was first observed in 5 month old mice and became severe by 12 months. Atherosclerosis was observed in older mice with severe VSMC loss and extracellular matrix deposition. Although all large arteries screened were abnormal, the descending aorta and carotid artery were the most severe. The staining justified that the progressive calcification found in vessels from older G608G mice, were absent in age-matched …show more content…
In this experiment, muscle-derived stem cells (MDSPCs) are isolated from regular two-year old mice that aged normally, and from progeriod mice. The same amount of cells were taken from each group, plated and the growth kinetics was measured using life cell imaging. The cells from each group were then cultured in different mediums. Muscle regeneration was examined using the cardiotoxin injury-inducing model to determine the difference in the function of stem cells between aged and young organisms. Using life cell imaging it was found that the old mice and the progeria mice had reduced counts of MDSPCs compared to the young mice. It was also observed that the time it took for the cells to double was prolonged 18 hours for the old mice and 20-27 hours for the progeria mice. This is compared to a doubling time of 15 hours in the young mice. This shows that the proliferation capacity of MDSPCs decreases with

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