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Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
Researchers find 'Probable Cause' for Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's, other Brain Disorders
 June 28, 2006 - Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Lou
Gehrig's disease and other brain disorders are among a growing list of
maladies attributed to oxidative stress, the cell damage caused during
metabolism when the oxygen in the body assumes ever more chemically
reactive forms.
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June 28, 2006 Exelon (rivastigmine tartrate), a
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Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
News |
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But the precise connection between oxidation and
neurodegenerative diseases has eluded researchers. Now, a study by the
Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and UCLA's
David Geffen School of Medicine reveals that damage is linked to a
natural byproduct of oxidation called nitration.
"We looked at a healthy brain and found nitration
of proteins that are implicated in neurodegenerative disease," said
Colette Sacksteder, PNNL scientist and lead author of the study,
published in the July issue of the journal Biochemistry (online today).
PNNL scientist Wei-Jun Qian was co-lead author.
The results are from the most detailed proteomic
analysis of a mammalian brain to date that is, a survey of nearly
8,000 different, detectable proteins in the mouse brain.
The research suggests that many neurodegenerative
diseases leave a biochemical calling card, or biomarker, that could be
used to predict the earliest stages of brain impairment. Many biomedical
researchers believe that detecting disease before symptoms occur is the
key to reversing many as-yet-incurable diseases.
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Pesticides Exposure
Associated With Parkinson's Disease
June 26, 2006 - In the first large-scale,
prospective study to examine possible links between chronic,
low-dose exposure to pesticides and Parkinsons disease (PD),
researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have
shown that individuals reporting exposure to pesticides had a 70
percent higher incidence of PD than those not reporting
exposure. No increased risk of PD was found from reported
exposure to other occupational hazards, including asbestos, coal
or stone dust, chemicals, acids, or solvents. The study will
appear in the July issue of Annals of Neurology and
also appears online via Wiley Interscience -
click here
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The biomarker is known as nitrotyrosine, made when
an amino acid in the brain, tyrosine, is in the presence of an
oxidative-stress molecule called peroxynitrate. The biomarker was found
on 31 sites along 29 different proteins, half of which had been
previously implicated in several of the neurodegenerative diseases.
"Our study certainly suggests that the sensitivity
of certain proteins to peroxynitrite is an early contributor to
neurodegeneration, but other factors may also be involved," said Diana
Bigelow, PNNL staff scientist and the paper's corresponding author.
"The next step, of explicitly looking at tissues
with neurodegenerative disease, will test this hypothesis."
More about study:
The study was made possible by a specially modified
mass spectrometer at PNNL, housed at the W.R. Wiley Environmental
Molecular Sciences Laboratory. The instrument, designed and operated by
a group led by co-author and Richard D. Smith, a Battelle Fellow,
separates and identifies proteins with unprecedented precision. Bigelow
and colleagues supported the results with standard molecular biology
techniques. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health
and PNNL.
PNNL is a DOE Office of Science laboratory that
solves complex problems in energy, national security, the environment
and life sciences by advancing the understanding of physics, chemistry,
biology and computation. PNNL employs 4,200 staff, has an annual budget
of more than $725 million, and has been managed by Ohio-based Battelle
since the lab's inception in 1965.
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