Northwestern Medicine research finding opens the door to a viral link to Parkinson's disease
'The message that we want to give to the general public is, it opens a new field of investigation, something that we didn't know about,' said Dr. Igor Koralnik, Northwestern's chief of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology and lead author of the study.
Parkinson's disease is a movement disorder caused by the loss of neurons that produce dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain. Why these neurons break down is unknown, but it's thought that this breakdown is caused by many factors, both genetic and environmental.
The team used a tool called ViroFind, which is able to test samples for all known viruses that infect humans much quicker than the usual one-at-a-time 'brute force' method. The lab found human pegivirus, or HPgV, in 5 of the 10 Parkinson's-affected brains they tested, and none of the brains without Parkinson's.
'Fifty percent of any population having this virus would be very, very high,' Barbara Hanson, the lab's post-doctoral fellow, said. Estimates calculate HPgV as being present in about 5% of blood donors in North America, and people with healthy immune systems generally lose the virus within two years of exposure. It is not known to cause disease in humans, so most who catch the virus will never know they had it.
Before this study, Hanson said, HPgV had not been found in human brain tissue. It was understood to primarily 'live' in blood.
'For this virus to be present in the brain, there must be a reason for that,' Koralnik said.
This doesn't mean that the virus itself is a trigger for Parkinson's, though. It could be that an as-yet unidentified genetic mutation that makes people susceptible to Parkinson's, also allows for the virus to spread throughout the body differently than in people without the mutation.
And even if further research shows HPgV as a direct cause of Parkinson's, both Koralnik and Dr. Danny Bega, medical director of Northwestern's Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center, said people shouldn't necessarily worry about getting HPgV.
A patient likely has to encounter a couple of different factors before they develop Parkinson's, Bega said. He puts it in terms of 'hits' — a hit could be genetic, or it could be environmental, such as exposure to a virus or pesticide. These 'hits' build up over time until there are enough factors to cause the neuron degeneration specific to Parkinson's.
It's possible that this is why Parkinson's risk increases with age, Bega said. The longer you live, the more of these 'hits' you take, as you encounter different Parkinson's risk factors throughout your life.
'I always caution people who try to blame their Parkinson's on one thing,' he said. 'Rest assured, it's never one thing that you could have done or should have done differently.'
The work to treat and hopefully one day prevent Parkinson's is being done through finding these factors and eliminating them one by one. 'The more targets that we have, the more likely we are to be able to achieve a treatment that actually can slow things down,' Bega said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Vox
17 hours ago
- Vox
The brain tech revolution is here — and it isn't all Black Mirror
is a senior editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate teams and the Unexplainable and The Gray Area podcasts. He is also the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section and writes the Good News newsletter. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. When you hear the word 'neurotechnology,' you may picture Black Mirror headsets prying open the last private place we have — our own skulls — or the cyber-samurai of William Gibson's Neuromancer. That dread is natural, but it can blind us to the real potential being realized in neurotech to address the long intractable medical challenges found in our brains. In just the past 18 months, brain tech has cleared three hurdles at once: smarter algorithms, shrunken hardware, and — most important — proof that people can feel the difference in their bodies and their moods. A pacemaker for the brain Keith Krehbiel has battled Parkinson's disease for nearly a quarter-century. By 2020, as Nature recently reported, the tremors were winning — until neurosurgeons slipped Medtronic's Percept device into his head. Unlike older deep-brain stimulators that carpet-bomb movement control regions in the brain with steady current, the Percept listens first. It hunts the beta-wave 'bursts' in the brain that mark a Parkinson's flare and then fires back millisecond by millisecond, an adaptive approach that mimics the way a cardiac pacemaker paces an arrhythmic heart. In the ADAPT-PD study, patients like Krehbiel moved more smoothly, took fewer pills, and overwhelmingly preferred the adaptive mode to the regular one. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic agreed: The system now has US and EU clearance. Because the electrodes spark only when symptoms do, total energy use is reduced, increasing battery life and delaying the next skull-opening surgery. Better yet, because every Percept shipped since 2020 already has the sensing chip, the adaptive mode can be activated with a simple firmware push, the way you'd update your iPhone. Waking quiet muscles Scientists applied the same listen-then-zap logic farther down the spinal cord this year. In a Nature Medicine pilot, researchers in Pittsburgh laid two slender electrode strips over the sensory roots of the lumbar spine in three adults with spinal muscular atrophy. Gentle pulses 'reawakened' half-dormant motor neurons: Every participant walked farther, tired less, and — astonishingly — one person strode from home to the lab without resting. Half a world away, surgeons at Nankai University threaded a 50-micron-thick 'stent-electrode' through a patient's jugular vein, fanned it against the motor cortex, and paired it with a sleeve that twitched his arm muscles. No craniotomy, no ICU — just a quick catheter procedure that let a stroke survivor lift objects and move a cursor. High-tech rehab is inching toward outpatient care. Mental-health care on your couch The brain isn't only wires and muscles; mood lives there, too. In March, the Food and Drug Administration tagged a visor-like headset from Pulvinar Neuro as a Breakthrough Device for major-depressive disorder. The unit drips alternating and direct currents while an onboard algorithm reads brain rhythms on the fly, and clinicians can tweak the recipe over the cloud. The technology offers a ray of hope for patients whose depression has resisted conventional treatments like drugs. Thought cursors and synthetic voices Cochlear implants for people with hearing loss once sounded like sci-fi; today more than 1 million people hear through them. That proof-of-scale has emboldened a new wave of brain-computer interfaces, including from Elon Musk's startup Neuralink. The company's first user, 30-year-old quadriplegic Noland Arbaugh, told Wired last year he now 'multitasks constantly' with a thought-controlled cursor, clawing back some of the independence lost to a 2016 spinal-cord injury. Neuralink isn't as far along as Musk often claims — Arbaugh's device experienced some problems, with some threads detaching from the brain — but the promise is there. On the speech front, new systems are decoding neural signals into text on a computer screen, or even synthesized voice. In 2023 researchers from Stanford and the University of California San Francisco installed brain implants in two women who had lost the ability to speak, and managing to hit decoding times of 62 and 78 words per minute, far faster than previous brain tech interfaces. That's still much slower than the 160 words per minute of natural English speech, but more recent advances are getting closer to that rate. Guardrails for gray matter Yes, neurotech has a shadow. Brain signals could reveal a person's mood, maybe even a voting preference. Europe's new AI Act now treats 'neuro-biometric categorization' — technologies that can classify individuals by biometric information, including brain data — as high-risk, demanding transparency and opt-outs, while the US BRAIN Initiative 2.0 is paying for open-source toolkits so anyone can pop the hood on the algorithms. And remember the other risk: doing nothing. Refusing a proven therapy because it feels futuristic is a little like turning down antibiotics in 1925 because a drug that came from mold seemed weird. Twentieth-century medicine tamed the chemistry of the body; 21st-century medicine is learning to tune the electrical symphony inside the skull. When it works, neurotech acts less like a hammer than a tuning fork — nudging each section back on pitch, then stepping aside so the music can play. Real patients are walking farther, talking faster, and, in some cases, simply feeling like themselves again. The challenge now is to keep our fears proportional to the risks — and our imaginations wide enough to see the gains already in hand. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Metallic nanoflowers heal brain cells and extend lifespan in stunning new research
A team at Texas A&M AgriLife Research has developed a new way to protect and potentially heal brain cells, using microscopic particles shaped like flowers. The so-called 'nanoflowers,' metallic nanoparticles engineered at the molecular scale, appear to restore the function of mitochondria, the cellular engines that power our bodies. The study suggests this could lead to a new class of neurotherapeutic drugs. Instead of just masking symptoms of conditions like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, nanoflowers may target the root cause, mitochondrial dysfunction. 'These nanoflowers look beautiful under a microscope, but what they do inside the cell is even more impressive,' said Dr. Dmitry Kurouski, associate professor at Texas A&M and lead investigator on the project. The research was led by Charles Mitchell, a doctoral student in the university's biochemistry and biophysics department, and Mikhail Matveyenka, a research specialist. Both work in Kurouski's lab at the Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture. Molecular fix for brain health Mitochondria convert food into energy for cells. But in the process, they also generate harmful byproducts like reactive oxygen species, unstable molecules that can accumulate and cause damage. To test the therapeutic potential of nanoflowers, the team exposed neurons and astrocytes, supportive brain cells, to two different types of nanoflowers. After 24 hours, cells showed improved mitochondrial structure and quantity, along with a significant drop in oxidative stress. 'Even in healthy cells, some oxidative stress is expected,' Kurouski said. 'But the nanoflowers seem to fine-tune the performance of mitochondria, ultimately bringing the levels of their toxic byproducts down to almost nothing.' According to Kurouski, healthier mitochondria could lead to better brain function overall. 'If we can protect or restore mitochondrial health, then we're not just treating symptoms—we're addressing the root cause of the damage,' he added. Worm model shows lifespan boost The team expanded the study beyond isolated cells and into live organisms using Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny worm commonly used in brain research. Worms treated with nanoflowers not only lived several days longer than untreated ones, but also showed lower mortality early in life. The findings strengthen the case for nanoflowers as neuroprotective agents. Kurouski's team now plans to test their safety and distribution in more complex animal models before considering human trials. Despite years of research, drugs that protect neurons from degeneration remain rare. Most treatments focus on reducing symptoms rather than halting disease progression. Kurouski believes this work could flip that script. 'We think this could become a new class of therapeutics,' he said. 'We want to make sure it's safe, effective and has a clear mechanism of action. But based on what we've seen so far, there's incredible potential in nanoflowers.' Texas A&M Innovation has filed a patent application for the use of nanoflowers in brain health treatments. Kurouski's team plans to collaborate with the Texas A&M College of Medicine to explore further applications, including stroke and spinal cord injury recovery. The study is published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Cantonment man finds rare meteorite after fireball
It was the darkened morning hours of July 6 when Christian Varady saw the fireball falling from the sky, a momentary streak of fiery light that appeared above his Cantonment home without a sound. "To me it seemed about this big," Varady said, positioning his hands as if holding an invisible basketball. "It was green and yellowish and then changed to blue and yellowish. It seemed like it lasted about five seconds, but it was probably just two seconds or so." He knew it landed close by. The streak seemed to hit near a well-manicured yard across the street, just a house down. When daylight came, Varady took his dog for a walk and thought he might do a little searching for evidence of what he saw hours earlier. He talked to the neighbor with the lush, green lawn and asked permission to search in his yard near the street. The man said sure, and Varady looked and soon found a pock mark in the grass, a small area of disturbance just a few inches across and a few inches deep. Inside, was a small rock-sized, rock-shaped something. He wasn't sure what the small piece was, but he had a guess. It was a meteorite. He searched around online hoping to find someone to help him confirm what he found, and everything led him to Wayne Wooten, the noted Pensacola astronomer and longtime astronomy professor at Pensacola State College with a doctorate degree in astronomy from the University of Florida. The two met at a Whataburger and Wooten observed the small piece. His take? "It's a meteorite," Wooten said on a recent visit to Varady's home, where he brought out his own kit of collected meteorites to compare with the new find. "I don't know anything else it could be." Of course, Varady would have to have the space rock chemically analyzed to make a 100% confirmation, but Wooten seems convinced, already matching the rock's probable makeup, which he estimates to be about 10% iron along with a mixture of silicate stone, with another meteorite from Northwest Africa found in the early 2000s. "We have something really cool here," Wooten said as he examined Varady's find. "Very rare." That's because, truly, it wasn't a "find." It was a "fall." In meteoritics − the study of meteors and meteorites − a "find" is fairly common and involves someone just finding a meteorite. A "fall" is much rarer and occurs when someone spots a falling meteorite, then finds it. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin Database, less than 500 "falls" have been recorded worldwide since 1950. Finds happen when folks discover meteorites that could have been on earth for thousands of years, while falls are always fresh meteorites. (A meteor is the falling space object, while a meteorite is a piece that actually reaches earth without burning up from the heat generated when entering the Earth's atmosphere.) Meet Wayne Wooten: Legendary astronomy professor stepping down because of Parkinson's Wooten guesses that Varady's meteorite survived because it was traveling relatively slow and because of its small size − remember that he didn't hear a sonic boom. "It's a good match for a chondrite meteorite, which is the most common," Wooten said, while watching Varady pick up his meteorite with a small magnet. "This one is very weakly magnetic. If he sneezes, it falls. It's probably 10% iron at most." The meteorites origin? "It's a chip off the old block," said Wooten, who is the Facebook page moderator for the Escambia Amateur Astronomers Association. "It's from a stony asteroid." Wooten said it came from an asteroid in the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter, where the large objects are frequently colliding, sending off pieces, many which are "swallowed up by Jupiter" or might even be burned up by the sun. This one got into a near-Earth orbit and could have been circling the planet for hundreds or thousands of years before falling in Cantonment. (Wooten said there are reports that it might have been witnessed as far away as Gulf Shores, Alabama.) "You saw it coming and you picked it up," Wooten said to Varady, who moved with his family to Cantonment after he lost everything during Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago. "It's one in a million for that to happen. It's just so rare." Though thousands of meteorites hit the Earth each year, most hit oceans or uninhabited forest areas and are not located. In fact, there is a heavily wooded area surrounding Varady's Cantonment subdivision. One of the most celebrated meteorite finds in Northwest Florida came in 1983 when treasure hunters using metal detectors found a bowling ball-sized meteorite in Grayton Beach, which is still one of the largest meteorites found in the Southeastern United States. But that was a "find" and not the rare "fall" discovery. "That's what makes Christian's so unique,'' Wooten said. "He saw that sucker coming in." Varady now hopes that some lab will take interest in his find and conduct official scientific testing. This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Meteorite found in Cantonment after man watches it fall from sky
