Hi, I wondered if anyone has any information on treating someone with moter neurone disease? There is surprisingly little information out there. Look forward to hearing any comments. Liz

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2002

Answers

Hi liz,

Just sent you some info about the green tea extract 'theanine' which has a similar molecular shape to glutamate and appears to block some of glutamate's excitotoxicity.

Arachidonic acid seems to be problem in that it seems to inhibit glutamate re-uptake in the astrocytes and is also involed messaging within the neuron. I wonder whether a diet low in arachidonic acid would be of benefit? Insulin also increases our production of arachidonic acid so I wonder how blood sugar problems would affect ALS?

'The manner in which arachidonic acid and other free fatty acids influence the vesicular uptake of glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) has been investigated. The cis-polyunsaturated fatty acid arachidonic acid (20:4), eicosapentanoic acid (20:5) and linolenic acid (18:3) at 150 nmol/mg protein (50 microM) inhibited the vesicular uptake of glutamate and GABA more than 70%.'

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2002

Hi again Liz,

I'm on the arachidonic acid trail again - this study shows how arachidonic acid inhibits mitochondria. Found another article that said that as blood platelets start to aggregate, they synthesise arachidonic acid - I remember Richard talking about fungus in the blood aggregating platelets and it seems fungus synthesises arachidonic acid - thinking about it, we do use COX inhibitors to kill fungus - hope I'm not too confusing!

Arachidonic acid interaction with the mitochondrial electron transport chain promotes reactive oxygen species generation.

Cocco T, Di Paola M, Papa S, Lorusso M.

Institute of Medical Biochemistry and Chemistry, University of Bari, Italy.

A study has been carried out on the interaction of arachidonic acid and other long chain free fatty acids with bovine heart mitochondria. It is shown that arachidonic acid causes an uncoupling effect under state 4 respiration of intact mitochondria as well as a marked inhibition of uncoupled respiration. While, under our conditions, the uncoupling effect is independent of the fatty acid species considered, the inhibition is stronger for unsaturated acids. Experiments carried out with mitochondrial particles indicated that the arachidonic acid dependent decrease of the respiratory activity is caused by a selective inhibition of Complex I and III. It is also shown that arachidonic acid causes a remarkable increase of hydrogen peroxide production when added to mitochondria respiring with either pyruvate+malate or succinate as substrate. The production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) at the coupling site II was almost double than that at site I. The results obtained are discussed with regard to the impairment of the mitochondrial respiratory activity as occurring during the heart ischemia/reperfusion process.

PMID: 10443919 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2002