Huntington's disease attacks and destroys brain cells in humans

Recent study conducted on mice has given more insight into how and why Huntington's disease attacks and destroys certain brain cells in human beings. We're excited about this result because it may explain why the patient gets the disease in this area of the brain called the striatum, said one of the researcher.

According to the study, a toxic protein linked to Huntington's disease can move from neuron to neuron through a nanotube tunnel whose construction is initiated by a protein called Rhes.

People with Huntington's disease inherit a damaged protein that is somehow complicit in destroying brain cells. Scientists discovered this protein in 1993 but are still piecing together its role in this degenerative disease.

Scans show Huntington's disease brains are shrunken and degraded. As the neurons deteriorate, people lose motor control, they can have emotional problems and their thinking and memory suffer.

Symptoms usually begin around age 30-40 and last 15-20 years until death. A rarer and more aggressive form of the disease affects children, cutting their childhood and lives short. About three to seven people out of 100,000 have the disease and it has mostly affected those with European ancestry.
However, the researcher believed the disease is under-reported in other areas. There is a lot of stigmas associated with the disease, he said. In the case of Huntington's the question is can we block this transport and does it have any benefit or effect? he asked.

For this study, the researchers, looked at mouse neurons under a confocal microscope and saw that the cells formed sticky, string-like protrusions around 150 microns long which floated above the cells, connecting them.

When I saw Rhes, making these tunnel-like tubes between the cells I was excited and at the same time perplexed, he said. They may have been missed before because they're on a different plane. You've to be really looking for it. It's like a bridge over a lake. If you're on the lake, you may not see the bridge above, but if you're on the shore, you can see the bridge, he said.

Scientist first described another type of tunneling nanotube in rat neurons in 2004. Since then, a number of researchers have observed them in cancer and other types of cells. But how they form and what they do was less clear.

To find out, the researchers tracked cell cargo moving through this tunnel bridge. They inserted the Huntington's human disease protein into the mouse brain cells, tagged it with fluorescence and then watched as it crossed over and crawled up to enter the neighbouring cell. Once the tunnel delivered it shipment it released and sprang back. Lysosomes and endosomes, cellular cargo bins that transport cell pieces or waste, also travel these inter-cellular highways, he said.

The Rhes protein exists in both mouse and human brains sick with Huntington's disease. Knocking out the Rhes gene in diseased mice results in less brain damage. In a 2009 study, he found that Rhes also alters the Huntington's disease protein's structure making it more toxic to brain cells.

The Rhes protein makes its own road. That is what is surprising to us. But it not only transports itself. Once the road is made, many things can be transported, he said.

The researchers continue to investigate what other proteins may be helping with tunnel construction and if other disease proteins move along these membranous highways. His laboratory is also developing ways to identify how Huntington's disease protein travels in the live brain.

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The Surprising Link Between Sleep and Pain Sensitivity

The correlation between sleep deprivation and a heightened sensitivity to pain is not an apparent one, but it may exist. In a 2018 paper, researchers established that our brains may turn off their “pain-protection” gear on days we don’t sleep enough.

Now let’s delve a little deeper into the findings of this paper and try to understand what makes us so irritable and grumpy when we sleep too little.

 

The Experiment To examine the connection between pain and no sleep, the researchers conducted an experiment using functional magnetic-resonance imaging (FMRI), during which a number of participants’ brain activity was recorded as they were exposed to a growing heat on one of their legs.

Once the patient noted the heat becoming unbearable this point was established as the pain threshold and the experimenters stopped recording brain activity.

Findings

1. How Did Participants React to Pain?  The findings surprised even the researchers themselves. Despite the small sample size (25 participants), the experimenters managed to establish that the threshold for thermal pain among the well-rested individuals was 111°F (44°C), whereas the sleep-deprived group could handle 4 degrees less.

2. What Brain Regions Could Account for The Different Pain Sensitivity? 
 

The region of the brain responsible for the perception of pain, the primary somatosensory cortex (highlighted in orange in the picture below), was significantly more responsive in the sleep-deprived individuals.

The most interesting and surprising finding, however, was related to other parts of the brain, the striatum and the insula (schematically highlighted below in purple).

These regions are responsible for producing a hormone linked to pain tolerance, among other things, dopamine. The brains of the people who didn’t get enough sleep produced significantly less dopamine, which made them worse at tolerating painful stimuli than the control group.

Finally, the researchers conclude that the effect of sleep deprivation can last for several days, with the individuals who got less sleep continuing to be more sensitive to pain days after getting little sleep.
 

3. What Conclusions Can We Make From This Study?

• These findings opened our eyes to the problem of sleep deprivation-induced pain sensitivity. This is particularly important hospital patients, who can be experiencing more pain because of the noisy hospital rooms in which they have to stay.
• The data can also be relevant to people suffering from painful chronic conditions, as a quality sleep could decrease their pain sensitivity.
• Finally, it is yet to be discovered if the same pain and no sleep link can be extended to the psychological experiences we have when we don’t get enough sleep: irritability and nervousness.

What remains really clear, however, is that scientists found yet another reason for us to get a good night’s sleep every night. 

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                         FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                  https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/           

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