Curcumin and Parkinson ’s disease

Curcumin is a powerful agent found to be a key component of turmeric. While wildly popular in food, curcumin has many health benefits that have long intrigued scientists. Among the many health benefits of this agent include its anti-inflammatory properties. Curcumin is known to provide benefits among many diseases including tumors, cancer and arthritis. 

Researchers have long known the benefits curcumin may provide against plaques in Alzheimer’s patients. Now researchers are investigating the potential benefits curcumin may provide in Parkinson’s patients. Researchers at Michigan State University suggest that curcumin may provide protective effects for patients with Parkinson’s. Specifically curcumin may protect against the clumping effects of a protein that is critical and prevalent in Parkinson’s patients. 

New Research published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry suggests that curcumin may rescue proteins from collecting together in the brain and in other areas, which is a primary effect of Parkinson’s disease. Curcumin may actually bind to proteins known as alpha-synuclein. This prevents these proteins from collecting at body temperature. 

Curcumin works by not just attaching to the alpha-synuclein, preventing clumping or aggregating of the proteins, but by increasing the reconfiguration of the protein. This means curcumin increases the rate at which the protein is removed from the dangerous zone so it will not aggregate with other proteins. 

This means it fixes the protein right at the point where it begins to go wrong. This may help researchers in their investigation of other proteins, helping them to identify agents that can help fix proteins at the point where they begin to misfold. Finding agents that can stop damage in the body before it begins, is a key component of successful research. 

Stopping a cancer gene before it mutates, would advance cancer science in many ways. Curcumin is a powerful discovery that will likely lead scientists in many new directions, and continue to provide tremendous benefits to researchers and Parkinson’s patients. Who knows what additional discoveries have yet to be made?