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The discovery, which centers around the protection of brain cells, could be a turning point in the fight against neurodegenerative disease, say the authors.

Neurodegenerative diseases occur when groups of nerve cells in the brain die, making it difficult for a person to move and to think.

According to Claire Bale, of Parkinson's UK, the symptoms of Parkinson's tend not to appear until 70 percent of nerve cells in the brain have already been lost.


Unfortunately, current treatments are only able to tackle the symptoms of the condition - they cannot slow or stop the degeneration of these cells.

Researchers led by Dr. Carlo Breda, of the laboratory of Prof. Flaviano Giorgini at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, wanted to gain a better understanding of how this kind of disease starts and how it progresses.

Reducing metabolites decreases the symptoms of neurdenegeration
The team used the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to investigate how metabolites in the kynurenine pathway contribute to a loss of nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

Metabolites are substances produced during metabolism or other chemical processes in the body.

The scientists showed that genetic and pharmacological strategies can be used to lower levels of toxic metabolites in the nervous system. The result was a reduction in a number of the symptoms of neurodegeneration.

Previous studies have shown that certain metabolites are more common in people with neurodegenerative disease, and that they are poisonous to nerve cells.

Genetic approaches have successfully prevented the activity of two critical enzymes in the kynurenine pathway, known as TDO and KMO. This reduced the amount of toxic metabolites and led to a decrease in nerve cell loss in Huntington's disease in a fruit fly model.

In the current study, the authors found that inhibiting these two enzymes led to an improvement in symptoms in the flies. This was due to increased levels of kynurenic acid :