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More distressing still, two of the study's participants, Daniel M. Stewart, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of North Texas, and Stephen E. Kenney, a detective sergeant with Georgia’s DeKalb County Police Department, took their own lives soon after data-collection wrapped.
“It pains me to no end that I will be causing so much grief,” Det. Kenney wrote in his suicide note. “Please understand that there is no other way for this to end... I can’t live one more day with this condition.”
Prof. Melcangi thus enlisted four members of his team—Silvia Giatti, PhD, Silvia Diviccaro, PhD, Rocco Piazza, MD, and Lucia Cioffi, PhD(c)—to perform a genome-wide analysis of finasteride’s impact on the brain of adult male rats.
Each animal was treated with 1 mg of finasteride per day for 20 consecutive days. Subsequent to that, Team Melcangi performed RNA sequencing analysis in the hypothalamus, an area of the brain that functions as the main link between the endocrine system and nervous system, and in the hippocampus, an area of the brain chiefly responsible for learning, memory, and processing emotions.
The majority of the dysregulation occurred in the hypothalamus, with 171 genes upregulated and 15 downregulated. In the hippocampus, 17 genes were upregulated, and two were downregulated.
“Some of the genes reported to be differentially expressed...suggest a potential link with specific side effects previously observed in [PFS] patients and in the animal model, such as depression, anxiety, disturbance in memory and attention, and sleep disturbance,” writes Prof. Melcangi.
“These data may provide an interesting background for future experiments addressed to confirm the pathological role of these genes in this experimental model, exploring the impact in their signaling pathways, and evaluating possible therapeutic strategies able to counteract their pathological effects,” he concludes.
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