Ongoing studies of neurological diseases being conducted on the Pacific island of Guam might have yielded information that could represent the next step towards a cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and any number of brain-degenerating diseases.
Dr. Paul Alan Cox is an ethnobotanist working with neurologists doing research on certain populations in Guam suffering from neurodegenerative diseases similar to Alzheimer’s. Cox was interested in why only one group of people in Guam, the Chamorro villagers, suffered from this disease while the island’s various other populations remained unaffected.
Researchers discovered that a staple of the Chamorro diet, cycad seeds used to make flour tortillas, contained the neurotoxin BMAA. Found in harmful blue-green algae blooms, the BMAA neurotoxin may have potential find its way into the human food chain through fish and shellfish which eat this algae when its present.
In a test which examined the brains of vervet monkeys who were given fruit dosed with BMAA, neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid deposits, hallmarks of neurodegenerative diseases, were found.
“When the neuropathology images started coming up, some of the neurologists started weeping. I couldn’t speak,” Cox said. “We knew that nobody has ever successfully produced [brain tangles and amyloid deposits] in an animal model.”
Additionally, a separate set of vervet monkeys were given BMAA along with a supplement of the dietary amino acid L-serine. These monkeys had fewer of these tangles developed in their brains.
Although the results from the test involving the L-serine are promising, Cox said that it is too soon to know if it will work with people.
The big takeaway from the study was the discovery of the cause of the neurodegenerative disease which plagues the Chamorro people: the BMAA. What the research might mean for the study of neurodegenerative diseases at large remains unknown.