Serum from Sydenham's chorea patients modifies intracellular calcium levels in PC12 cells by a complement‐independent mechanism

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The proposed pathogenesis of Sydenham's chorea (SC) is an autoantibody‐mediated basal ganglia dysfunction. Our study has shown that incubation of PC12 cells with complement‐inactivated serum from SC patients was associated with a significant increase in Ca2+ levels evoked by KCl stimulus (mean ± SEM, 341.0 ± 8.7% of fluorescence intensity, arbitrary units) when compared with incubation with control serum (313.8 ± 8.7% of fluorescence intensity, arbitrary units; P = 0.01). The increase in Ca2+ levels determined by SC patients sera correlated directly with the enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay optical density values for anti–basal ganglia antibodies. Our study supports the hypothesis that antibodies against basal ganglia in SC may cause their dysfunction. © 2005 Movement Disorder Society