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from the turning-back-the-hands-of-time dept.
Molecular 'switch' reverses chronic inflammation and aging:
Chronic inflammation, which results when old age, stress or environmental toxins keep the body's immune system in overdrive, can contribute to a variety of devastating diseases, from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and cancer.
Now, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a molecular "switch" that controls the immune machinery responsible for chronic inflammation in the body. The finding, which appears online Feb. 6 in the journal Cell Metabolism, could lead to new ways to halt or even reverse many of these age-related conditions.
[...] In the study, Chen and her team show that a bulky collection of immune proteins called the NLRP3 inflammasome -- responsible for sensing potential threats to the body and launching an inflammation response -- can be essentially switched off by removing a small bit of molecular matter in a process called deacetylation.
Overactivation of the NLRP3 inflammasome has been linked to a variety of chronic conditions, including multiple sclerosis, cancer, diabetes and dementia. Chen's results suggest that drugs targeted toward deacetylating, or switching off, this NLRP3 inflammasome might help prevent or treat these conditions and possibly age-related degeneration in general.
"This acetylation can serve as a switch," Chen said. "So, when it is acetylated, this inflammasome is on. When it is deacetylated, the inflammasome is off."
[...] "I think this finding has very important implications in treating major human chronic diseases," Chen said. "It's also a timely question to ask, because in the past year, many promising Alzheimer's disease trials ended in failure. One possible explanation is that treatment starts too late, and it has gone to the point of no return. So, I think it's more urgent than ever to understand the reversibility of aging-related conditions and use that knowledge to aid a drug development for aging-related diseases."
Journal Reference:
Ming He, Hou-Hsien Chiang, Hanzhi Luo, Zhifang Zheng, Qi Qiao, Li Wang, Mingdian Tan, Rika Ohkubo, Wei-Chieh Mu, Shimin Zhao, Hao Wu, Danica Chen. An Acetylation Switch of the NLRP3 Inflammasome Regulates Aging-Associated Chronic Inflammation and Insulin Resistance. Cell Metabolism, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.01.009
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @02:30PM (3 children)
I hate to say it, but have you considered that vitamin c can't be monetized...unless big pharma decides to expand into citrus growing?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @02:45PM (2 children)
It is worse than that, the low fat, high sugar diet they recommend interferes with vitamin c absorption and transport (dehydroascorbate competes with glucose for glut1/3 transporters).
So they are feeding you stuff to make you deficient in vitamin c then trying to come up with dozens of different expensive and dangerous treatments to fix the myriad of problems caused by the diet.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:57PM (1 child)
yes, and they always blame the immune system and these other processes for doing their goddamn jobs. it's not the immune systems fault that your BBB is porous from eating pig slop 24/7 so that viruses and chemicals are floating around in your brain, as one example. these hacks then prescribe immune suppressants. it's hard not to believe they are malicious.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @08:03PM
They are trained to not use critical thinking or common sense. For example, I just heard a lady from WHO just say they had recently found that the virus could be spread within hospitals. No shit... It is like until there is undeniable proof they ignore even the most obvious thing.