CHICAGO, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- Scientists at Northwestern University have found a toxic cascade that leads to the death of brain cells in patients with Parkinson's disease, and how to stem the damage with early treatment using antioxidants.
Previous research indicated the death of brain cells involved two structures within the cells, called mitochondria and lysosomes. Based on this and using human brain cells from patients with Parkinson's disease, Dimitri Krainc, chair of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and colleagues pinpointed a chain reaction of dysfunction in those two cell structures, which was caused by the buildup of a faulty form of a neurotransmitter, called oxidized dopamine.
This accumulation of oxidized dopamine in brain cells caused some of the lysosomes to malfunction, which in turn damaged the mitochondria, and those malfunctioning cell structures actually sped up the accumulation of the faulty neurotransmitter. The result was a negative feedback loop that led to the death of the brain cells.
Krainc and his colleagues then began looking for ways to interrupt it. One of the key strategies that worked in experiments was to treat the brain cells very early in the process with specific antioxidants.
"With this approach, we found we could attenuate or prevent the downstream toxic effects in human dopamine neurons," Krainc said.
The approach provides a blueprint for the development of future therapies. If patients can be identified early enough, treatment with these antioxidants might be able break this toxic cycle, Krainc said.
The study has been published in the American journal Science.
