The risk of developing Parkinson’s disease is twice as high in men as in women and a new study has uncovered a protein present in the brain may be responsible. Usually considered as harmless and benign, PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1) protein is considered as enemy by the immune system in some Parkinson’s cases.
According to the study, led by a team from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, the PINK1-related damage done by the immune system’s T cells is much more widespread and aggressive in the brains of men than women, Science Alert reported.
“The sex-based differences in T cell responses were very, very striking,” immunologist Alessandro Sette, from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology said as quoted by Science Alert. “This immune response may be a component of why we see a sex difference in Parkinson’s disease.”
The scientists used blood samples from Parkinson’s patients and tested the response of the T cells in the blood against a variety of proteins previously linked to Parkinson’s – finding that PINK1 stood out. The team noticed that a six-fold increase in T cells targeting PINK1-tagged brain cells, compared with healthy brains. In the female Parkinson’s patients, there was only a 0.7-fold increase, Science Alert reported.
“We could potentially develop therapies to block these T cells, now that we know why the cells are targeting in the brain,” says immunologist Cecilia Lindestam Arlehamn, from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
Although there is still no cure for Parkinson’s disease, researchers around the world are trying to understand the risk factors involved in its development, and new approaches to tackling it.
“We need to expand to perform more global analysis of the disease progression and sex differences – considering all the different antigens, disease severities, and time since disease onset,” Sette said.
The findings of the study were published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.