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How Parkinson’s drug could put out ‘fire in the brain’ set by COVID-19
By Stuart Layt
Scientists have found a big clue as to why some people with COVID-19 develop Parkinson’s and dementia symptoms, and more importantly, what to do about it.
The research, led by scientists at the University of Queensland on blood samples from healthy people, found SARS-CoV-2 was causing the same type of inflammation in the brain as that seen in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s sufferers.
Dr Eduardo Albornoz Balmaceda (left) with colleague Dr Alberto Amarilla Ortiz.Credit: University of Queensland
Professor Trent Woodruff from UQ’s School of Biomedical Sciences said when the virus got into the brain it activated the brain’s immune cells, known as microglia, which then caused inflammation.
“The microglia were driving what we call the inflammasome, the immune pathway, and it’s the same pathway [activated] in people with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s,” he said.
“It turns out the virus is very good at switching on this inflammatory pathway.”
Because of the difficulty and ethical issues of experimenting on the brains of people with COVID-19, the researchers developed a laboratory model by taking blood samples from healthy people with no prior COVID-19 infection and cultivating microglia for use in the experiments.
A COVID-19 infected mouse brain showing ‘angry’ microglia in green and SARS-CoV-2 in red.Credit: University of Queensland
They discovered some microglia did not react strongly to the virus, but when there were proteins in the blood samples which were associated with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, the inflammatory response was strong.
Woodruff said it was like “pouring fuel on a fire in the brain”, causing the inflammation to run out of control.
Professor Trent WoodruffCredit: University of Queensland
“And in fact we can take an amount of virus that wasn’t causing any activation, a fairly low amount, and a low amount of the proteins, and when we put them together we got a very strong response,” he said.
The implication the researchers have drawn from the results is that people who were predisposed to Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s have their condition “accelerated” by the body’s immune response to SARS-CoV-2 entering their brain.
The finding has a potential silver lining, with researchers identifying a drug in development that could head off the inflammatory process.
Research co-author, UQ’s Dr Eduardo Albornoz Balmaceda, said an inflammation-inhibiting drug developed at UQ already undergoing clinical trials for treating Parkinson’s could be used to preemptively treat people infected with the virus.
“The drug targets the inflammatory process in the brain, so it would be effective for anyone experiencing this inflammation,” he said.
“It stops the progression of the inflammation, so it puts out the fire in the brain.”
The researchers said more work was needed on both the drug and the investigation of the inflammatory pathways, but it added to the understanding of the long-term effects of COVID-19.
“It’s a lab study, so it’s not the same as a study in humans, so it will be really interesting to follow up this study with data from patients,” Albornoz Balmaceda said.
The research has been published in the Nature journal Molecular Psychiatry.