Your Appendix Could Cause You Parkinson’s Disease
The appendix is reputable for having no known function and occasionally needing to be cut out. Now, a study suggests that it could even be supplying a brain-damaging protein involved in Parkinson’s disease and that removing it early in life can decrease a person’s risk of the disease or delay it.
The brain of a person with Parkinson’s disease usually contains clumps of a misfolded form of a protein known as α-synuclein (αS), which can damage and kill neurons. If parts of the brain responsible for movement are harmed, the results could include some of the symptoms of Parkinson’s. This observation leads to a theory suggesting that dysfunctional αS spreads up the fibres of the vagal nerve by converting the protein into clumpy ones.
In this recent study, neuroscientist Viviane Labrie and her team at the Van Andel Institute in Michigan decided to focus on the appendixes of a large population, over a long time.
“[Clumped forms of αS are] present in all of us,” Labrie says, “but appears to cause trouble only if it spreads to the brain”. Moreover, they found that the risk of developing Parkinson's was about 20% lower in those who had removed their appendix, and its onset was delayed by roughly 3.6 years in patients who had the surgery 20+ years prior to their diagnosis.
However, due to all the uncertainty, Labrie is saying that “preventive surgery is too far,” but she and her team hopes that future Parkinson’s treatments may take their research into account.
Read all the details in the full version of this article: https://www.newsoftheuniverse.com/2018/11/your-appendix-could-cause-you.html
Read the original article here: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/seeds-parkinson-s-disease-may-hide-appendix.
Image Credit: B. A. KILLINGER ET AL. SCIENCE TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE (2018)
Written and condensed by R. Wang
Edited by H. Guo