{"id":10384,"date":"2016-10-28T08:46:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T08:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=10384"},"modified":"2016-10-28T08:46:16","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T08:46:16","slug":"could-gut-dysfunction-in-parkinsons-overlap-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/could-gut-dysfunction-in-parkinsons-overlap-with-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Could gut dysfunction in Parkinson’s overlap with ME?"},"content":{"rendered":"

ME global chronicle<\/strong> article,\u00a0October 2016:\u00a0Parkinson’s disease protection\u00a0may begin in the gut.<\/p>\n

Why an article on Parkinson\u2019s in an ME-magazine, one might\u00a0ask.<\/p>\n

There seems to be more and more suspicion that there\u2019s\u00a0overlap between Parkinson\u2019s, Alzheimer\u2019s and ALS with ME. The findings in this research only seem to affirm.<\/p>\n

Science daily article<\/a>, 5 October 2016:<\/p>\n

Your gut may play a pivotal role in preventing the onset of\u00a0Parkinson’s disease. And the reason may be its knack for\u00a0sleuthing.\u00a0 Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that the gut may be key to\u00a0 preventing Parkinson’s disease. Cells located in the intestine spark an immune response that protects nerve cells, or neurons, against damage connected with\u00a0 Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n

Acting like detectives, the immune intestinal cells identify\u00a0damaged machinery within neurons and discard the defective parts. That action\u00a0ultimately preserves neurons whose impairment or death is known to cause\u00a0Parkinson’s.<\/p>\n

“We think somehow the gut is protecting neurons,” says Veena Prahlad,<\/p>\n

assistant professor in biology at the UI and corresponding author on the paper\u00a0published Aug. 30 <\/a>in the journal Cell Reports.\"veena-prahlad\"Parkinson’s disease is a brain disorder that erodes motor control and balance over
\ntime. It affects some 500,000 people in the U.S., according to the National
\nInstitutes of Health. The disease occurs when neurons — nerve cells — in the brain
\nthat control movement become impaired or die. Normally, these neurons produce
\ndopamine, and when they are damaged or killed, the resulting dopamine shortage
\ncauses the motor-control problems associated with the disease.<\/p>\n

Scientists have previously linked Parkinson’s to defects in mitochondria, the\u00a0energy-producing machinery found in every human cell. Why and how\u00a0mitochondrial defects affect neurons remain a mystery. Some think the impaired\u00a0mitochondria starve neurons of energy; others believe they produce a neuron harming\u00a0molecule. Whatever the answer, damaged mitochondria have been linked\u00a0to other nervous disorders as well, including ALS and Alzheimer’s, and researchers\u00a0want to understand why.<\/p>\n

Prahlad’s team exposed roundworms to a poison called rotenone, which\u00a0researchers know kills neurons whose death is linked to Parkinson’s. As expected,\u00a0the rotenone began damaging the mitochondria in the worms’ neurons.<\/p>\n

To the researchers’ surprise, though, the damaged mitochondria did not kill all of\u00a0the worms’ dopamine-producing neurons; in fact, over a series of trials, an\u00a0average of only seven percent of the worms, roughly 210 out of 3,000, lost\u00a0dopamine-producing neurons when given the poison.<\/p>\n

“That seemed intriguing, and we wondered whether there was some innate\u00a0mechanism to protect the animal from the rotenone,” Prahlad says.<\/p>\n

It turns out there was. The\u00a0roundworms’ immune defenses,\u00a0activated when the rotenone was\u00a0introduced, discarded many of\u00a0the defected mitochondria,\u00a0halting a sequence that would’ve\u00a0led to the loss of dopamine producing\u00a0neurons. Importantly,\u00a0the immune response originated\u00a0in the intestine, not the nervous\u00a0system.<\/p>\n

\"pd-gut\"<\/p>\n

“If we can understand how this is\u00a0done in the roundworm, we can\u00a0understand how this may happen in mammals,” Prahlad says.<\/p>\n

The researchers plan to conduct more experiments, but they’ve got some\u00a0interesting hypotheses. One is the intestinal immune cells are, according to\u00a0Prahlad, “constantly surveilling mitochondria for defects.”<\/p>\n

Even more, those cellular watchdogs may be keeping their eyes on the\u00a0mitochondria “because they don’t trust them,” Prahlad suggests. The reason has\u00a0to do with the prevailing theory that mitochondria originated independently as a\u00a0type of bacterium and were only later incorporated into the cells of animal, plants,\u00a0and fungi as an energy producer.<\/p>\n

If that theory is correct, the intestinal immune responders may be especially\u00a0sensitive to changes in mitochondrial function not only for its potential damaging\u00a0effects, but because of the mitochondria’s ancient and foreign past as well.<\/p>\n

“How it’s happening is suggestive of the possibility that the innate immune\u00a0response is constantly checking its mitochondria,” Prahlad says, “perhaps\u00a0because of the bacterial origin of the mitochondria\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ME global chronicle article,\u00a0October 2016:\u00a0Parkinson’s disease protection\u00a0may begin in the gut. Why an article on Parkinson\u2019s in an ME-magazine, one might\u00a0ask. There seems to be more and more suspicion that there\u2019s\u00a0overlap between Parkinson\u2019s, Alzheimer\u2019s and ALS with ME. The findings … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[538,3243,3242],"class_list":["post-10384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-gut-microbes","tag-parkinsons-disease","tag-veena-prahlad"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-2Hu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10384"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10414,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10384\/revisions\/10414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}