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The cell map can be used to study new treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders.
– As expected, we found that dopamine-producing nerve cells were associated with Parkinson’s disease. But more surprisingly, we also saw that nerve cells in the intestine appear to play a role in the disease, supporting the hypothesis that Parkinson’s disease may start in the intestine, says Patrick Sullivan, professor in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics of the Karolinska Institute and Yeargan Distinguished Professor at the University. from North Carolina, United States.
The nervous system consists of hundreds of cell types with different functions. Understanding what types of cells are involved in various diseases is crucial to understanding how diseases occur, and therefore how to develop treatments.
The researchers have now combined mouse studies with human tissue analysis to systematically review the different types of cells in the nervous system and all the genes they express. The objective was to identify to what extent these genes have risk variants for various neurological and psychiatric diseases, including Parkinson’s disease.
Support cells involved in the disease.
Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease with cognitive and motor symptoms in which the patient gradually loses the midbrain cells that produce dopamine. When the researchers looked at the differences in brain tissue from healthy individuals and people with Parkinson’s disease at different stages of the disease, they made another unexpected discovery. A type of brain support cells called oligodendrocytes was found to be affected early in the course of the disease, indicating that they may play an important role in the early stages of the disease.
– The fact that animal studies pointed us to oligodendrocytes and that we were later able to determine that these cells were also affected in patients suggests that the results may have clinical significance, says Jens Hjerling-Leffler, leader of the research team at the Department of Biochemistry and Medical Biophysics of the Karolinska Institute. and the other main author of the study.
Oligodendrocytes appear to be affected even before patients lose their dopamine-producing cells.
“It makes them an interesting target for the development of drugs against Parkinson’s disease,” says Julien Bryois, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute’s Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a shared author.
Scientific article:
Genetic identification of the cell types underlying the features of the brain complex provides information on the etiology of Parkinson’s disease. Julien Bryois, Nathan G. Skene, Thomas Folkmann Hansen, Lisette JA Kogelman, Hunna J. Watson, Zijing Liu, Eating Disorders Task Force, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, International Headache Genetics Consortium, Research Team 23andMe, Leo Brueggeman, Gerome Breen, Cynthia M. Bulik, Ernest Arenas, Jens Hjerling-Leffler, Patrick F. Sullivan. Genetics of nature
Contact:
Patrick Sullivan, Professor, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, University of North Carolina, [email protected]
Jens Hjerling-Leffler, Research Team Leader, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institute, [email protected]
