Is an ocean-dwelling snail going to be the answer to OT?
Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:20 pm
Here is a very interesting email from Rich, a fellow OT person who thought I might want to post it for everyone to read. Gloria
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SUBJECT: Is an ocean-dwelling snail going to be an answer to Orthostatic Tremor?
I am now just a month away from my 66th birthday and the disorder known as Orthostatic Tremor (OT) continues to annoy me. It has gotten a little worse since I last wrote, with muscle weakness being more noticeable.
But, getting on with life, I have moved our family to the western highlands of Panama in Central America. Got to have new adventures in life, don't you know?
If you think it's hard to explain to others why you are unable to stand still and visit with them in a normal social setting without first locating a wall to lean against, you should try it in a language for which you have only the most rudimentary verbal skills. For me, that would be spanish. Ah, the challenges do multiply!
On the OT front, I continue to keep an eye out for possible treatments for OT. Monitoring various websites and blogs, I recently became aware of some successful research being conducted at the University of Utah in the USA.
It involves an ocean-dwelling venomous cone snail found in the Pacific and Indian oceans that goes by the name of Conus omaria and the unusual nerve toxin that it produces. In a story datelined 21 Aug 2006, University of Utah researchers isolated an unusual nerve toxin in this snail, and say its ability to glom onto the brain's nicotine receptors may be useful for designing new drugs to treat a variety of psychiatric and brain diseases.
"We discovered a new toxin from a venomous cone snail that may enable scientists to more effectively develop medications for a wide range of nervous system disorders including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression, nicotine addiction and perhaps even schizophrenia, says J. Michael McIntosh.
McIntosh says the OmIA toxin will be useful in designing new medicines because it fits like a key into certain lock-like nicotinic acetylcholine receptors found on nerve cells in the brain and the rest of the nervous system.
Those are the same types of receptors you activate if you smoke a cigarette, he says, explaining that nicotine in cigarette smoke binds to the receptor to trigger the release of a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical that carries a nerve impulse from one nerve cell to another, allowing nerve cells to communicate.
For instance, one receptor modifies the release of dopamine. There are inadequate amounts of dopamine in Parkinson's disease, so a medicine designed to fit into a certain subtype of nicotinic receptor would produce more dopamine and thus protect against the development of tremors and other Parkinson's symptoms. Indeed, other studies have found that smoking seems to forestall Parkinson's disease.
McIntosh says the new toxin itself is unlikely to become a drug because it blocks rather than stimulates nicotinic receptors. But because it can act on some types of nicotinic receptors and not others like a key that opens some locks but not others it has great potential as a tool for precisely identifying the shape and structure of the receptor locks, thus making it easier to design new medicines or keys to fit those receptors and trigger them to release desired neurotransmitters.
Of course, the part that really caught my eye was that this toxin "may enable scientists to more effectively develop medications for a wide range of nervous system disorders". Such as Orthostatic Tremor, maybe?
Rich
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SUBJECT: Is an ocean-dwelling snail going to be an answer to Orthostatic Tremor?
I am now just a month away from my 66th birthday and the disorder known as Orthostatic Tremor (OT) continues to annoy me. It has gotten a little worse since I last wrote, with muscle weakness being more noticeable.
But, getting on with life, I have moved our family to the western highlands of Panama in Central America. Got to have new adventures in life, don't you know?
If you think it's hard to explain to others why you are unable to stand still and visit with them in a normal social setting without first locating a wall to lean against, you should try it in a language for which you have only the most rudimentary verbal skills. For me, that would be spanish. Ah, the challenges do multiply!
On the OT front, I continue to keep an eye out for possible treatments for OT. Monitoring various websites and blogs, I recently became aware of some successful research being conducted at the University of Utah in the USA.
It involves an ocean-dwelling venomous cone snail found in the Pacific and Indian oceans that goes by the name of Conus omaria and the unusual nerve toxin that it produces. In a story datelined 21 Aug 2006, University of Utah researchers isolated an unusual nerve toxin in this snail, and say its ability to glom onto the brain's nicotine receptors may be useful for designing new drugs to treat a variety of psychiatric and brain diseases.
"We discovered a new toxin from a venomous cone snail that may enable scientists to more effectively develop medications for a wide range of nervous system disorders including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression, nicotine addiction and perhaps even schizophrenia, says J. Michael McIntosh.
McIntosh says the OmIA toxin will be useful in designing new medicines because it fits like a key into certain lock-like nicotinic acetylcholine receptors found on nerve cells in the brain and the rest of the nervous system.
Those are the same types of receptors you activate if you smoke a cigarette, he says, explaining that nicotine in cigarette smoke binds to the receptor to trigger the release of a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical that carries a nerve impulse from one nerve cell to another, allowing nerve cells to communicate.
For instance, one receptor modifies the release of dopamine. There are inadequate amounts of dopamine in Parkinson's disease, so a medicine designed to fit into a certain subtype of nicotinic receptor would produce more dopamine and thus protect against the development of tremors and other Parkinson's symptoms. Indeed, other studies have found that smoking seems to forestall Parkinson's disease.
McIntosh says the new toxin itself is unlikely to become a drug because it blocks rather than stimulates nicotinic receptors. But because it can act on some types of nicotinic receptors and not others like a key that opens some locks but not others it has great potential as a tool for precisely identifying the shape and structure of the receptor locks, thus making it easier to design new medicines or keys to fit those receptors and trigger them to release desired neurotransmitters.
Of course, the part that really caught my eye was that this toxin "may enable scientists to more effectively develop medications for a wide range of nervous system disorders". Such as Orthostatic Tremor, maybe?
Rich