Cysteine Diet Preventing Progression of Huntington's Disease

The article described how a team of neuroscientists from John Hopkins used genetically engineered mice to research further on the functioning of how and where Huntington's disease is caused. Huntington's disease is an inherited disorder, and is caused by the abnormal glutamine in the DNA coding of amino acids. They found that those with the disease had a low level or deficiency of the amino acid, cysteine. The absence of this enzyme, cystathionine gamma lyase (CSE) was discovered to contribute to the degenerative progression process of the disease. The CSE is known to help make the amino acid cysteine and hydrogen sulfide maintain the blood pressure and heart function in the body. While studying the mice with CSE, Snyder and his team found that the mutated proteins attaching to the CSE gene are responsible for whether the gene is turned off or on. If the gene was found to be turned on, this lead to the mice being diseased and it also lead to the deprivation of cysteine in the human brain tissues. Cysteine can be found in wheat germ and whey protein, and the mice with a more cysteine-rich diet showed a decrease progression of the disease as opposed to the others without the diet. To conclude, the results are not definite to the cure of the disease, but it is a hopeful development to suggest for a potential treatment considering that the results prove that a high cysteine diet halts the progression of the disease.

Related Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131211133952.htm