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Curry Spice Curcumin And Parkinson's Disease? Protects Against A53T Alpha-synuclein-induced Toxicity
18 Nov 2008

Johns Hopkins Researchers at Neuroscience 2008 - Curcumin, derived from the curry spice turmeric, has strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Both oxidative damage - damage caused by oxygen - and inflammation have been implicated in nerve cell death associated with Parkinson's disease. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have shown in a laboratory model of Parkinson's disease that curcumin does protect cells from dying.

To test the protective effects of curcumin, the research team used a Parkinson's disease cell model system. They tested curcumin on nerve-like cells that make a mutant form of the protein alpha-synuclein, called A53T, that clumps together inside of cells to cause harmful biochemical and cellular changes that eventually kill the cells. A53T alpha-synuclein causes 50 percent of untreated cells to die, whereas only 19 percent of A53T cells treated with curcumin died. Further research showed that curcumin itself reduces oxidative damage.

"These results suggest that curcumin is a potential candidate for inhibiting the oxidative damage that leads to Parkinson's disease," says Wanli Smith, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Hopkins. "This common curry spice could be a weapon to protect the brain."

Johns Hopkins Medicine
www.hopkinsmedicine.org
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Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/129787.php

Main News Category: Parkinson's Disease

Also Appears In: Neurology / Neuroscience, Nutrition / Diet,


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more information here
http://www.answers.com/Curcumin?afid...ookup&nafid=27
from the Linus Pauling Institute
Biological Activities

Antioxidant Activity

Curcumin is an effective scavenger of reactive oxygen species and reactive nitrogen species in the test tube (in vitro) (9, 10). However, it is not clear whether curcumin acts directly as an antioxidant in vivo. Due to its limited oral bioavailability in humans (see Metabolism and Bioavailability above), plasma and tissue curcumin concentrations are likely to be much lower than that of other fat-soluble antioxidants, such as alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E). However, the finding that 7 days of oral curcumin supplementation (3.6 g/day) decreased the number of oxidative DNA adducts in malignant colorectal tissue suggests that curcumin taken orally may reach sufficient concentrations in the gastrointestinal tract to inhibit oxidative DNA damage (7). In addition to direct antioxidant activity, curcumin may function indirectly as an antioxidant by inhibiting the activity of inflammatory enzymes or by enhancing the synthesis of glutathione, an important intracellular antioxidant (see below).

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocente...cals/curcumin/