Parkinson’s disease is the second neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease in France. It is caused by the degeneration of dopaminergic nerve cells in a specific area of the brain: the substantia nigra. Sick people thus develop tremors, stiffness and see their movements slow down.
The causes of the disease are still poorly understood. However, observation of the brains of deceased persons with the disease show that the degenerating neurons contain a very high concentration of iron compared to normal. “The accumulation of iron leads to oxidative stress which notably destroys lipids and proteins and leads to cell death. We therefore suspected that excess iron could be involved in the degeneration of neurons in sick patients”, specifies Etienne Hirsch, director of the Inserm-Pierre and Marie Curie University unit.
The research group has shown that sick rodents over-express the transporter DMT1 responsible for importing iron into nerve cells. This causes the accumulation of iron and the death of neurons. The researchers therefore inhibited the activity of this transporter to assess the consequences on the disease. The mutated mice are half as affected by the disease as the others, as if the alteration of the transporter had protected them against the effect of the toxin. “These results are very conclusive. We have shown that by inhibiting the activity of the transporter DMT1, we protect rodents against the disease”, concludes Etienne Hirsch.
