Human genetic disorder: Huntington’s disease read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/898-human-genetic-disorder-huntington-s-disease

Three years ago University of Wyoming researcher’s findings shows for the first time mice engineered to have the human genetic disorder Huntington's disease have an altered immune response to a common infection.

Jonathan Fox in veterinary sciences and Jason Gigley in molecular biology exposed mice with Huntington's disease (HD) to toxoplasmosis, a common and widespread infection.

They found, such mice die sooner and have an altered immune response. That could reveal facts about not only Huntington's, but also the interaction between infectious diseases and related neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and prion diseases, in humans.

Fox and Gigley refuse to speculate if the response may be the same in humans with HD, but they believe they've found the one factor that could contribute to the variability of when symptoms appear in humans.

Fox says, Toxoplasmosis, caused by Toxoplasma gondii, appears to make mouse HD worse. This infection has high prevalence in the human population, so we think it’s important to investigate if T. gondii also affects human HD.

Humans can contract toxoplasmosis by consuming undercooked meat, coming into contact with feces or not washing vegetables or fruit, or even digging in a garden without gloves, then touching their mouths.

The parasite is forever; once infected, there is no cure. It is the third leading cause of food-borne illness in the U.S. that results in hospitalization. However, once people feel better, most show no symptoms.

In their study, the two found HD and T. gondii infection shared a common biological pathway. T. gondii infections activate a pathway in the cell that deprives the parasite of food. A biological pathway is a series of actions that leads to change in a cell.

"Our thinking was this infection, based on literature, should activate this pathway that is known to make Huntington's worse; that's why we came up with the idea of infecting mice with the parasite," Fox says. "Mice are naturally infected with the parasite, so we are not studying an artificial infection."

 

This study is the first that demonstrates any type of definable impact of a live infectious agent on an HD animal model.