Mount Everest Air Offers Clues to Parkinson’s Treatment

Mount Everest Air Offers Clues to Parkinson’s Treatment
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Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Mass General Brigham have found that a low-oxygen environment, similar to the air at Mount Everest’s base camp, may offer clues for a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease, SciTech Daily reported. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, showed that exposing mice with a Parkinson’s-like disease to low oxygen protected their brain cells and restored movement.

The research challenges the long-held belief that more oxygen is always beneficial. The team suggests that in Parkinson’s, a surplus of oxygen due to faulty cellular processes may actually drive neurodegeneration. When they continuously housed mice in a low-oxygen environment, the mice did not lose neurons or show movement problems, even with the presence of toxic protein clumps called Lewy bodies. The researchers also found that this treatment was effective even after symptoms had already appeared, leading to a reversal of motor skill problems.

The study’s authors, including Vamsi Mootha, Fumito Ichinose, and Eizo Marutani, believe that the excess oxygen in the brain becomes toxic when damaged mitochondria cannot use it efficiently. By reducing the overall oxygen supply, they are “cutting off the fuel for that damage.” The scientists are now working on developing “hypoxia in a pill” drugs that could safely mimic the protective effects of low oxygen, potentially leading to a new treatment paradigm for Parkinson’s and other forms of neurodegeneration. The authors caution that it is too early to apply these findings to patient care, as breathing low-oxygen air without medical supervision can be harmful.