Talk:Astrogliosis

Hi, a few of us are working on this page as part of a neuroscience course project. --Tranpb (talk) 05:17, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Merge

Neither article is bulked out much , so I'd say ,yes, id content deserves seperate articles once added can then be split again. LeeVJ (talk) 22:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I am currently working on writing the article on gliosis for a college neuroscience project. I realize that there is a great deal of overlap between gliosis and astrogliosis, but it's important to me to make the gliosis article separate and also substantial on its own. In order to do this, I would like to include a section on astrogliosis in my article, which will be fairly detailed, perhaps more so than most summarized content from specialized articles within a more general article. Since both the gliosis and astrogliosis articles are currently stubs, it seems acceptable to include a significant amount of information on astrogliosis as a subtopic within my gliosis article. However, I know that several people are currently working on the astrogliosis article as part of a class project, and I would like to make sure that we can communicate in order to produce two articles that are both substantial and effectively contribute to the Wikipedia knowledge base. Aorticelli3 (talk) 19:36, 26 September 2012 (UTC)Aorticelli3

Peer-Review

I think the article is really well written and interesting overall. Reading through it did seem like the Causes section was really light. I am not sure if this is just because the range of causes is so broad or the amount of information available is low however, I think some more detail in this regard would round the article out. As with other critiques, I think a picture, figure, or diagram of some sort would help the article look professional and complete. Overall, it is a pretty interesting article. DanielNAraujo (talk) 00:08, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the review! We added some information from the introduction to the causes section. The section more gives an overview and isn't a main focus of the article, but we added some more relevant information to beef up the section. We also added a picture to show a stain of astrogliosis as well as a picture of GFAP expression in reactive astrocytes. Clarkat (talk) 05:05, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer-Review

Hey guys, awesome article overall. The only issues I have found upon a read-through have to do with formatting and the "Causes" section. As far as formatting goes, I suggest you guys include a picture or two that displays either processes leading to astrocyte proliferation, or the actual proliferation itself. Slides or electron microscope images would be really helpful and engaging. Also, instead of using numbering in the pathology section, I would suggest using bullets. Numbers imply a finite, static list that may not be added to readily, and also imply that you have included each and every possibility that could be included in the list in question. Then again, this is merely a stylistic issue. The "Causes" section may need to be beefed up a bit, as it does not stand on its own as a very strong or complete section. A lot of what this article is centered on is what causes astrogliosis, so why not elaborate on how (mechanistically) certain biological pathways lead to its manifestation. Overall, spectacular article!!! Ryburns83 (talk) 19:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

We agreed with your suggestions and added a picture showing the process of astrogliosis and its effects and we also changed the numbering to bullet points. We added some to the causes section, but that wasn't a main focus for the article. We concentrated on its effects and the biological mechanisms involved there. Thank you for your help in your review. We appreciate it. Clarkat (talk) 05:09, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review

I find this article interesting and it is well written. But the only thing I think it needs work is the Causes part where it merely indicates that the changes that it has undergone by reactive astrocytes varies with nature of severity. I think this part is vaguely written and can be improved putting more significance on malformed proteins like prions with some physical symptoms. There are some benefits of astrogliosis such that it can help to protect the nervous system from further damage (but prevents regeneration afterward). I enjoyed reading especially the novel therapeutic techniques. Jaeha24 (talk) 18:32, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. We added to the causes section so that it is more specific, which is also touched upon in the introduction. Not sure what you mean by significance on malformed proteins like prions with some physical symptoms - is there some particular source you are referencing? Also, the benefits of astrogliosis is already discussed in the subsequent sections under functions and effects, namely neural protection and repair and scar formation. Tranpb (talk) 06:06, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review

I have organized my proposed edits based on the article subsections:

Introduction: Speaking grammatically, I think the article would benefit from rewording the introduction in order to make the article easier to read and understand. I have proposed a new introduction that I think is easier to follow and more comprehensive. I tried to keep the original meaning of the sentences in tact in making so many changes. Some items to still consider: Is astrogliosis the exact same thing as reactive astrogliosis? It is unclear from the article. Also the last sentence in the introduction is confusing. What are interdigitating walls? Also what is anisomorphic gliosis?

“Astrogliosis (also known as astrocytosis or reactive [astrogliosis?]) is the abnormal increase in the number of astrocytes due to the destruction of nearby neurons from infection, trauma, ischemia, stroke, autoimmune responses, or neurodegenerative diseases. In healthy neural tissue, astrocytes play critical roles in energy provision, regulation of blood flow, synaptic function and remodeling, and homeostasis of extracellular fluid, ions, and neurotransmitters [1][2]. Astrogliosis changes the molecular expression and morphology astrocytes, altering their normal functioning. In reactive astrogliosis and severe forms of astrogliosis, scars form via the process of anisomorphic gliosis[4]. This inhibits axon regeneration through the formation of interdigitating walls of astroglial cells.”

Causes: I would propose expanding the section on Causes. I think it could be much more specific. At least include the information that was presented in the introduction.

Functions: Rename the section Functions to Effects. I found a lot of run-on sentences within this section that made it hard to read. A possible rewording for the beginning could be:

“Reactive astrocytes resulting from nearby neuronal damage undergo changes which alter the astrocyte functioning both beneficially and detrimentally. These changes can result in gain or loss of function in astrocyte regulation of CNS inflammation, and neural protection and repair.”

The section on neural protection and repair should be related back to astrogliosis more. What is a direct endfoot interaction? Also the article goes back and forth a lot between talking about reactive astrocytes and astrocytes. Try to focus the information only on reactive astrocytes and only talk about normal astrocyte functioning if it is necessary for contrast.

The sentence, “The repair of a disruption in the blood brain barrier is facilitated by reactive astrocytes via their direct endfeet interaction with blood vessel walls that allows diffusion of factors produced by astrocytes, inducing blood brain barrier properties” needs to be edited. I couldn’t come up with a reasonable edit.

In the scar formation section I don’t know if the molecular triggers paragraph belongs there. If it does belong there it needs to be related back to scar formation more.

In the regulation of inflammation section it seems that the whole first paragraph talks only of normal astrocytes. If it was supposed to be referring to reactive astrocytes that should be made more clear. The first sentence in the last paragraph, “A functional model that can reconcile this apparent paradox of the potential to exert both pro- and anti-inflammatory activates might be that reactive astrocytes function not only to activate inflammation, in particular at early times after insults, but also over time form potent cell migration barriers that demarcate areas where intense inflammation is needed and restrict the spread of inflammatory cells and infectious agents into nearby healthy tissue[3][6][7]” is a very long run on sentence and should be broken into two or three sentences.

Biological Mechanisms: What exactly do you mean by biological mechanisms? What does GFAP stand for?

Neurological pathologies and Novel theraputic techniques: I thought these sections were very informative and very well organized. The information was also very interesting. If this could be expanded up on at all that would add substance to your article.

Morsekb (talk) 16:46, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

We reviewed the article and fixed any grammatical or run-on sentence errors. Also, the introduction was reworded accordingly and the causes section was expanded to cover what was in the introduction. We called the functions section "Functions and Effects" and attempted to relate everything back to astrogliosis more. GFAP was also tagged to another page on wikipedia to explain its meaning. Thanks for your review! Clarkat (talk) 05:15, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Also, just to clarify on our edits, the heading "Functions" is to refer to the purpose of astrogliosis, but it can seem confusing since we talk about its effects too - which is why we just combined the heading titles. The molecular triggers paragraph in the scar formation is appropriate because it gives a little more detail about what leads to scar formation. We talk about astrocytes because it is easier to understand the functions of reactive astrocytes in comparison to healthy astrocytes. We did make which we were talking about clearer in the article. We also added a few sentences that should help the reader see the relation between the discussion on astrocytes and reactive astrocytes. Tranpb (talk) 06:13, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review #2

Nice job guys! I thought your material was very well-researched; you clearly were able to find, read, and synthesize a lot of reviews concerning your topic. I just have a few suggestions which I think will make your already strong article even better overall. As stated above, expanding on your causes section a bit might help the reader understand further sections. Since "Causes" is your first topic section, it is especially important to providing an understanding of the topic. Furthermore, figures or pictures would definitely help highlight particularly important pathways or molecules that you discuss.

The "Functions" section and the "Therapies" section seem to be extremely well-researched, but cleaning up some grammatical issues such as run-on sentences might make the information more clear and concise. For example, the introduction of the Functions section is 4 lines long but only one sentence. It might flow better as two or three sentences instead. Furthermore, the Therapies section might be difficult for a person without a neuroscience background to understand. It was tough to figure out if in each separate paragraph you were discussing a new treatment or not. Perhaps you could further explain the information in each paragraph or break down the information into more common terminology. Scollanm (talk) 03:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)Scollanm

Thank you for the great review! We cleaned up any grammatical errors we could find and added a picture as well. For the causes, we added some topics from the introduction, but that wasn't the main focus of the article. Each section of the therapies was a new treatment, which we will indicate in the section. Clarkat (talk) 05:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hey guys, I really enjoyed the article. The Functions section, specifically the paragraph dealing with Regulation of Inflammation, was very informative and well written. The role of astrocytes was well discussed and through with respect to what was covered in class and discussed in your sources. While I was initially uncertain about your use of numbering, I think it outlined the topics in the section you wished to note in a clear and organized way. One thing I would suggest, in the therapeutic techniques section, is a bit more discussion on the therapeutic role of TGFB. Since therapeutic techniques could be seen as the most relevant part of the article to readers who wish to know more about the disease itself and how to treat it, perhaps it would be useful to delve into Source [2] and mention (maybe in a few sentences) why TGFB-mediated proteoglycan production is higher in bFGF and IL-1 presence and how anti-TGFB antibody can help ameliorate the effects of astrogliosis.Also, a minor typo in the Neural Protection and repair paragraph-- ammonium should be written with the 4 as a subscrip rather than a superscrip. Not really a big deal though. Overall, it was a great and interesting article! Liber.mark (talk) 20:13, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. As you will see, we are adding some more to the therapeutic techniques section. Clarkat (talk) 05:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review

Overall, the article has a lot of great information. However, I think some minor changes to grammar and phrasing would go a long way with making the article more reader-friendly. The awkward phrasing made understanding the topic more difficult than necessary.

I came across a few grammatical issues, mainly with comma usage, starting in the introduction. You may want to reread just looking for natural breaks or pauses in sentences. Inevitably, with this kind of writing the sentences get cumbersome, so I tend to find that the more you can break up a sentence, the easier it is to read. For instance in the overview, this sentence was awkwardly worded: “In the central nervous system insults such as infection, trauma, ischemia, stroke, autoimmune responses, and neurodegenerative disease, astrocytes respond in this process of astrogliosis.” Just a few grammatical adjustments would make a big difference in the ease of reading the article.

I agree with the other peer reviewers and believe that the article would greatly benefit from an expansion on the causes of astrogliosis. You may want to consider including a few examples of CNS injury and diseases. From the introduction, I thought the topic seemed interesting, and was wondering specifically what the causes may be, so I think this would be a good section to spend some more time on.

As in the introduction, there were a few awkwardly worded sentences in the function section as well, including the first sentence in the section. Your information is excellent, but confusing phrasing deters the reader and makes the topic more difficult to understand. Again, I would recommend trying to split up the long sentences into a fewer short sentences, or at least check your comma usage.

I liked the section on scar formation. I thought this description was well worded and easy to understand. If you could organize or phrase the other sections in a similar manner, I think that would be very effective. This was much easier to read because the sentences were shorter and more direct, and this was why it was so effective.

In the neurological pathways section, the first sentence states “performed by astrocytes or reactive astrocytes.” If there is a difference between astrocytes and reactive astrocytes, the difference was not clear to me based on the article. If there is a difference, you will want to clarify this, most likely in the introduction section. If there isn’t a difference, I think being more consistent in the use of either “astrocyte” or “reactive astrocyte” (but not both) throughout the article would help eliminate confusion.

In the novel therapeutic techniques section, are the different paragraphs different techniques, or are they all related to neurotrophins? I think if you included subheadings to split up the different techniques, it might be clearer to the reader what information is related to each other and which information is about separate techniques. For instance, possible subheadings might include BB14, Anti-TGFB, and ethidium bromide. Also in this section, you first name TGFB and then name TGF(beta), which of these is correct?

Kmcglynn (talk) 18:25, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your helpful suggestions. We have re-worded things and broken down run-on sentences. We hope the article is now more concise and easier to read and understand. As we took from other peer reviews, we did add a little to the causes. We tried to limit the usage of bullet points because of the general wikipedia guidelines. We also clarified the difference between astrocytes and reactive astrocytes in the introduction and throughout the article. Tranpb (talk) 06:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review

I broke up my review by paragraph as well.

Introduction: Very well done, concise, hits all the major points expected in a wikipedia article. Only suggestion would be possibly breaking up the second sentence as its very long in the list, maybe separating the homeostasis functions into its own sentence. Also " astrocytes respond in this process of astrogliosis. This process..." sounds repetitive, possibly changing it to "astrocytes respond via astrogliosis. This process.." may work better. Just nit picking at this point however. Also you could wikilink axon regeneration to neuroregeneration. Although it's not exactly referring to axons, it does cover the topic in its article.

Causes: Very well done, nice and concise.

Functions:

In the Scar formation paragraph, the first sentence is a bit of a run-on. If this could be broken up into two sentences, it would flow more smoothly. Parenchyma has a wikipedia page and should probably be linked to it. Same with glial fibrillary acidic protein.

In Regulation of inflammation simply add "They interact extensively with microglia, [and] are key players in CNS inflammation." Also in the second and third paragraphs, consider breaking up the first sentence in both as they're a bit of a run-on. The third especially should be proofread a bit, consider cutting out "A functional model that can reconcile" and begin with "This apparent paradox..". Also "This correlates with evolutionary pressures that astrogliosis has probably become beneficial over time" I would avoid using probably, and maybe rephrase it to be" Evolutionarily, astroglisis has become beneficial over time." Shorter and more concise rather than flowing sentences is easier to read and gets the point across quicker.

Biological mechanisms: Check for repetitive wording, and again try to shorten some sentences. The paragraph "Although there is a large array of the different effects reactive astrocytes can exert in response to different challenges or during different phases of the response to insults as the response progresses over time, a few of the signaling molecules are discussed below." Should be cut and put into one sentence, as it doesn't reach a point, and there is no need to mention "discussed below" Possibly here you could give one sentence to introduce the topic of signaling molecules, and then bullet point them all below. Check spelling and capitalization in fourth paragraph as well.

Neurological pathologies: Very well written, I like the use of numbering to break it up to make it easier to read, however like the person above me mentioned, I would use bullet points instead, because numbers make it sound like those are the absolute examples.

Novel therapeutic techniques: I would avoid the use of "researchers believe that further research into.." it sounds like the information is coming from a primary source.

Overall, very well done article. Lots of information, my main critique would lie in the need for proofreading, which shouldn't take too long. Also I understand there may be problems with copyrights but if you can find a picture or diagram about astrogliosis or structure of astrocyte that would make it more aesthetically pleasing as well. Good job!

T Doh (talk) 20:02, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. We wiki-linked axon regeneration, as you recommended. We broke up run-on sentences and removed words like "probably" and "discussed below." We tried to make it transition better. Tranpb (talk) 06:26, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Review

Great job so far! Your writing is great and there isn't much ambivalence in what you say. There are some portions where you state that there are "molecules of many classes" that effect the astrocytes. I would say to give examples of what some of these are as it would be more informative and help out the reader much more. Also, a picture may help bolster what you are trying to say, maybe something along the lines of what a astrogliosis sample looks like? May give the page a little more appeal and give a sense of what we are reading.

Lastly, in the molecular mechanisms portion of your article you talk about GFAP but it is not linked to another page, but the next time you reference it, it is linked. Make sure that the first time you talk about a subject, that is the time you link it and the subsequent times you don't have too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AdamMJenks (talk • contribs) 19:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

We have made the following changes as you suggested: added a figure, linked GFAP earlier, and added some more information to help the reader. Thanks for the help. 06:28, 3 December 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tranpb (talk • contribs)