You’ve heard of Parkinson’s disease but you may not know exactly what it is. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease that causes a loss and degeneration of neurons.
In this video, shared by khanacademymedicine in 2015, watch a drawn explanation of what Parkinson’s disease is, what it does to the body, its symptoms and causes and its risk factors. It also discusses possible treatment options.
The battle against Parkinson’s disease may be getting sweeter, with a new study underway seeking to understand if concentrated chocolate supplements could help alleviate the disease’s symptoms. A team of researchers from Dresden University of Technology, Germany, are busy conducting tests on 30 participants to further understand the benefits of phenylethylamine, a compound found in cocoa that has been linked to dopamine upregulation.
Parkinson’s disease causes a gradual loss of nerve cells and drop in levels of dopamine, eventually provoking involuntary tremors that can severely interfere with quality of life. Chocolate supplements contain as much as 85% cocoa, and the Dresden researchers hope to prove it to have non-pharmaceutical benefits for those suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
In the brain the compound is thought to act more as a neuromodulator than a neurotransmitter in that it binds with presynaptic vesicles and occupies the spaces that normally takes up dopamine. This causes a rise in free-circulating dopamine, which then boosts dopaminergic transmission.
In the study participants will be given 50 grams of either white chocolate, which has zero cocoa, or dark chocolate. The test will take place twice a day for one week, with the second week of the test involving other types of chocolate. This short experiment should help shed more light on the symptomatic differences between the two tests.
This experiment draws from a study published in April 2013, titled, “Contribution of β-phenethylamine, a component of chocolate and wine, to dopaminergic neurodegeneration: implications for the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease” from a team of researchers at Assam University in India, that in contrast, suggests this cocoa ingredient may actually be helping the onset of Parkinson’s disease. “As consumption of phenylethylamine enriched food items has become an addiction in modern life, our proposed mechanism is of enormous significance and impact,” the authors wrote.
Findings on the health benefits of chocolate intake for the sake of increasing phenylethylamine levels have been debatable at best, however, this compound undergoes a significant amount of degradation in the process of digestion, preventing most of it from reaching supposed therapeutic levels in the brain.In this video, shared by khanacademymedicine in 2015, watch a drawn explanation of what Parkinson’s disease is, what it does to the body, its symptoms and causes and its risk factors. It also discusses possible treatment options.
~~~~~~~~~~
Researchers have synthesized two compounds that resemble caffeine and prevent the misfolding of alpha-synuclein — the culprit of neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. These compounds were shown to effectively prevent the cells from dying.
The findings by researchers from University of Saskatchewan in Canada advance the understanding of processes that lead to clumping of alpha-synuclein and may lead to new treatments of the disease.
The study, “Novel Dimer Compounds That Bind α-Synuclein Can Rescue Cell Growth in a Yeast Model Overexpressing α-Synuclein. A Possible Prevention Strategy for Parkinson’s Disease,” was published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
Several epidemiological studies have noted that Parkinson’s disease is less common among people who drink plenty of coffee. This inspired the researchers to synthesize compounds with similar properties, which was a challenging task, according to the researchers.
Earlier data also has indicated that such compounds need to bind alpha-synuclein at both ends of the protein chain to be neuroprotective. A binding that produces a too-compact structure instead could be neurotoxic, so the work was a fine balance between the two.
The team synthesized 30 compounds acting as so-called “bifunctional dimers.” The term describes a type of drug that can link to two different substances. They first started with a caffeine scaffold, and then experimented attaching other substances reported to impact Parkinson’s disease. They tested nicotine, metformin, which is a diabetes medication, and aminoindan, a chemical resembling the Parkinson’s drug rasagiline.
By testing their compounds in a yeast model of Parkinson’s disease, the team found that two of the compounds bound to both ends of the alpha-synuclein protein chain, preventing it from aggregating. Cells treated with the two compounds also grew normally.
Testing the “monomer” versions of the compounds, that is molecules holding only one of the protective factors, did not produce equally good results.
“Many of the current therapeutic compounds focus on boosting the dopamine output of surviving cells, but this is effective only as long as there are still enough cells to do the job,” Jeremy Lee, a biochemist from the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine and senior author of the study, said in a news release. “Our approach aims to protect dopamine-producing cells by preventing α-synuclein from misfolding in the first place.”
“Our results suggest these novel bifunctional dimers show promise in preventing the progression of Parkinson’s disease,” said Lee. Parkinson’s News Today is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
http://parkinsonsnewstoday.com/social-clips/2016/10/10/what-is-parkinsons-disease
No comments:
Post a Comment