Reduced glutathione (an antioxidant capable of preventing damage to cellular components) is a new protective agent against the most important neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Huntington’s, as revealed by a study carried out by an international team made up of researchers from the Superior Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC).
The results of this research, carried out in animal and cellular models and which have been published in the journal Cell Death & Differentiationopen the possibility of use formulations derived from reduced glutathione to treat neurodegenerative diseases.
Image: C. elegans individuals expressing the ß-amyloid protein in muscle cells (Aß)
As he explains Antonio Miranda Vizuete researcher of in it Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (), mixed center of the CSIC, the University of Seville and the Junta de Andalucía, “Many human diseases occur with an aberrant aggregation of certain proteins, and this type of pathology is known by the generic name of proteinopathies”. And, between them, “We found many of the most prevalent neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Huntington’s diseasebut also pathologies that affect other organs such as cataracts that occur due to protein aggregation in the lens of the eye”indicates this expert, coordinator of the study together with the researcher Juan Cabello Pardosof the Biomedical Research Center of La Rioja.
The study, which combines unicellular (yeast) and multicellular (worm Caenorhabditis elegans) and human cells, has shown that the inability to adequately maintain reduced glutathione levels in the body causes a increased protein aggregation caused by inhibition of autophagy, as explained by Miranda Vizuete. Autophagy is one of the cellular mechanisms by which the organism eliminates those proteins that are not functional and that in many cases add irreversibly.
“The fact that the protective role of glutathione in these proteinopathies is not limited to the nervous system, but also occurs in other tissues such as muscle or intestine, expands the therapeutic possibilities of glutathione in diseases such as amyloidosis or cataracts”concludes Miranda Vizuete.
Scientific reference:
Guerrero-Gómez D, Mora-Lorca JA, Sáenz-Narciso B, Naranjo-Galindo FJ, Muñoz-Lobato F, Parrado-Fernández C, Goikolea J, Cedazo-Minguez Á, Link CD, Neri C, Sequedo MD, Vázquez-Manrique RP, Fernández-Suárez E, Goder V, Pané R, Cabiscol E, Askjaer P, Cabello J, Miranda-Vizuete A. Loss of glutathione redox homeostasis impairs proteostasis by inhibiting autophagy-dependent protein degradation. Cell Death Differ. DOI: 10.1038/s41418-018-0270-9.