People with a family history of Parkinson’s disease should stay away from second-hand smoke, as it could worsen the progression of the disease, a recent study by researchers at National Sun Yat-sen University found.
The study was conducted by researcher Wang Chia-chen (王家蓁), director of the school’s Aerosol Science Research Center, and Fan Hsiu-fang (范秀芳), who teaches at the school’s Institute of Medical Science and Technology, and was published on March 14 by the international journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
The study showed that the ultrafine suspended particles (PM1) produced by cigarettes — which make up 80 percent of a cigarette’s aerosol particles — might aggravate the course of Parkinson’s disease. It found that the protein alpha-synuclein, which accumulates in people with Parkinson’s, aggravates oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and cell death when exposed to cigarette aerosol extract.
Photo: CNA
“After aerosol particles of different sizes enter the human body through breathing, they settle into different parts of the respiratory system based on their particle size and other physical and chemical properties,” Wang said.
“The smaller the particles, the greater the chance of entering deeper into the lungs and depositing in the lower respiratory tract or alveolar area,” she said.
Since the particles in cigarettes are mostly ultrafine PM1 particles, they are very likely to settle deep in the lungs, Wang said.
Some PM1 might even penetrate the alveoli and enter the blood circulation system and affect other organs, or enter the central nervous system through the nasal-brain passage and affect the operation of brain nerve cells, she said.
“They can even cause neurodegenerative diseases or aggravate their progression, as we’ve seen here, and general medical masks cannot effectively filter particles below PM2.5,” she said.
For the study, the team used the neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y — a human-derived cell line used in scientific research — as a model for observing the effects of PM1 on Parkinson’s disease.
“We observed that alpha-synuclein in the SH-SY5Y cells combine with cigarette aerosol components to intensify various cellular activities,” Fan said.
“That includes intracellular toxicity, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and autophagy dysregulation, ultimately leading to Parkinson’s disease cells,” he added..
Those in high-risk groups including patients with Parkinson’s disease, those with a family history of early-onset Parkinson’s disease and those with abnormal late-night schedules should avoid smoking or being exposed to second-hand smoke to reduce the risk of disease, she said.
In addition, eating more antioxidants and exercising more could increase the antioxidant capacity in cells and slow the damage that might be caused by oxidative stress, she said.
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