Parkinson’s disease is a nerve problem that makes it hard for people to control their muscles. About 1 million people in the U.S. have it.
For a while, doctors have noticed that when patients do aerobic exercise – the kind that makes your heart pump faster – their Parkinson’s symptoms get better. But no one really knew why.
A Special Hormone: Irisin
Scientists from Johns Hopkins Medicine and Dana Farber Cancer Institute decided to explore this mystery. They focused on a hormone called irisin.
Hormones are like messengers in our body. Irisin is special because our body makes more of it when we do aerobic exercise.
Ted Dawson from Johns Hopkins and Bruce Spiegelman from Dana Farber were curious about irisin because other scientists had found it might be linked to brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The Tests and What They Found
The scientists did some experiments with mice that were made to have symptoms like Parkinson’s. They looked at a protein called alpha synuclein.
When this protein forms clumps, it kills some brain cells and leads to Parkinson’s.
What the scientists found was really interesting. When they increased the levels of irisin in these mice, these harmful protein clumps didn’t form as much.
In fact, irisin stopped these clumps from gathering and killing brain cells.
To see how irisin helped the mice, they did a few tests. They found that the mice with more irisin could hold onto things better and move down a pole more easily than other mice.
They also noticed that in the brains of the mice with more irisin, there were 50-80% fewer harmful protein clumps.
What This Could Mean for Treatment
Ted Dawson said that if this discovery about irisin is right, it could be turned into a new treatment for Parkinson’s.
There’s a big push in medicine to use our body’s own genes to treat diseases. And since irisin is a natural hormone, it might be a good option for treatment.
Bruce Spiegelman added that because irisin is natural and can move from our blood into our brain, it’s worth studying more. He believes it could be a way to treat not just Parkinson’s but other brain diseases too.
In short, something as simple as a hormone that our body makes when we exercise might be a big key to helping people with Parkinson’s.
It’s a reminder that sometimes, the answers to big problems might be found in the small, everyday things.
If you care about Parkinson’s disease, please read studies about Vitamin E that may help prevent Parkinson’s disease, and Vitamin D could benefit people with Parkinson’s disease.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about new way to treat Parkinson’s disease, and results showing COVID-19 may be linked to Parkinson’s disease.
The study was published in PNAS.
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