WEDNESDAY, June 29, 2005 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they've identified a mechanism that causes proteins to clump together in the brain cells of Parkinson's disease patients, in a finding that could help lead to treatments for the illness.
This protein clumping is part of a "vicious cycle," noted researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. As the proteins clump together, they inhibit an enzyme that normally breaks them down. This leads to the formation of even more protein clusters.
"It's a disease involving accumulation of a protein in an aberrant form," study senior researcher Dr. Philip Thomas, a professor of physiology, explained in a prepared statement
He and his team identified a specific protein, alpha-synuclein, as the culprit. Normally, when a cell is stressed, alpha-synuclein unfolds and an enzyme degrades the protein into harmless pieces that can't clump together. But in people with Parkinson's disease, there's a malfunction in some of the degrading enzyme, leaving shortened sections of unfolded alpha-synuclein instead of the more harmless pieces.
These intact sections of alpha-synuclein act like "seeds," collecting other unfolded sections of the protein around them. It takes only a few molecules of such fragments to start the Parkinson's process, the researchers explained.
The study was published in the June 17 issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about Parkinson's disease.
