"This Basil....This....Smack on Head!"
Posted on 10/07/2021 9:05:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
University of South Florida Health-led team discovers that the compound fenchol has the same beneficial effect as gut-derived metabolites in reducing neurotoxic amyloid-beta in the brain.
Fenchol, a natural compound abundant in some plants including basil, can help protect the brain against Alzheimer’s disease pathology, a preclinical study led by University of South Florida Health (USF Health) researchers suggests.
The new study published on October 5, 2021, in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, discovered a sensing mechanism associated with the gut microbiome that explains how fenchol reduces neurotoxicity in the Alzheimer’s brain.
Emerging evidence indicates that short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs)– metabolites produced by beneficial gut bacteria and the primary source of nutrition for cells in your colon — contribute to brain health. The abundance of SCFAs is often reduced in older patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. However, how this decline in SCFAs contributes to Alzheimer’s disease progression remains largely unknown.
Gut-derived SCFAs that travel through the blood to the brain can bind to and activate free fatty acid receptor 2 (FFAR2), a cell signaling molecule expressed on brain cells called neurons.
“Our study is the first to discover that stimulation of the FFAR2 sensing mechanism by these microbial metabolites (SCFAs) can be beneficial in protecting brain cells against toxic accumulation of the amyloid-beta (Aβ) protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease,” said principal investigator Hariom Yadav, PhD, professor of neurosurgery and brain repair at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, where he directs the USF Center for Microbiome Research.
One of the two hallmark pathologies of Alzheimer’s disease is hardened deposits of Aβ that clump together between nerve cells to form amyloid protein plaques in the brain. The other is neurofibrillary tangles of tau protein inside brain cells. These pathologies contribute to the neuron loss and death that ultimately cause the onset of Alzheimer’s, a neurodegenerative disease characterized by loss of memory, thinking skills, and other cognitive abilities.
Dr. Yadav and his collaborators delve into molecular mechanisms to explain how interactions between the gut microbiome and the brain might influence brain health and age-related cognitive decline. In this study, Dr. Yadav said, the research team set out to uncover the “previously unknown” function of FFAR2 in the brain.
The researchers first showed that inhibiting the FFAR2 receptor (thus blocking its ability to “sense” SCFAs in the environment outside the neuronal cell and transmit signaling inside the cell) contributes to the abnormal buildup of the Aβ protein causing neurotoxicity linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Then, they performed large-scale virtual screening of more than 144,000 natural compounds to find potential candidates that could mimic the same beneficial effect of microbiota produced SCFAs in activating FFAR2 signaling. Identifying a natural compound alternative to SCFAs to optimally target the FFAR2 receptor on neurons is important, because cells in the gut and other organs consume most of these microbial metabolites before they reach the brain through blood circulation, Dr. Yadav noted.
Dr. Yadav’s team narrowed 15 leading compound candidates to the most potent one. Fenchol, a plant-derived compound that gives basil its aromatic scent, was best at binding to the FFAR’s active site to stimulate its signaling.
Further experiments in human neuronal cell cultures, as well as Caenorhabditis (C.) elegans (worm) and mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease demonstrated that fenchol significantly reduced excess Aβ accumulation and death of neurons by stimulating FFAR2 signaling, the microbiome sensing mechanism. When the researchers more closely examined how fenchol modulates Aβ-induced neurotoxicity, they found that the compound decreased senescent neuronal cells, also known as “zombie” cells, commonly found in brains with Alzheimer’s disease pathology.
Zombie cells stop replicating and die a slow death. Meanwhile, Dr. Yadav said, they build up in diseased and aging organs, create a damaging inflammatory environment, and send stress or death signals to neighboring healthy cells, which eventually also change into harmful zombie cells or die.
“Fenchol actually affects the two related mechanisms of senescence and proteolysis,” Dr. Yadav said of the intriguing preclinical study finding. “It reduces the formation of half-dead zombie neuronal cells and also increases the degradation of (nonfunctioning) Aβ, so that amyloid protein is cleared from the brain much faster.”
Before you start throwing lots of extra basil in your spaghetti sauce or anything else you eat to help stave off dementia, more research is needed — including in humans.
In exploring fenchol as a possible approach for treating or preventing Alzheimer’s pathology, the USF Health team will seek answers to several questions. A key one is whether fenchol consumed in basil itself would be more or less bioactive (effective) than isolating and administering the compound in a pill, Dr. Yadav said. “We also want to know whether a potent dose of either basil or fenchol, if it could be delivered by nasal spray, would be a quicker way to get the compound into the brain.”
Reference: “Activation of Microbiota Sensing – Free Fatty Acid Receptor 2 Signaling Ameliorates Amyloid-β Induced Neurotoxicity by Modulating Proteolysis-Senescence Axis” by Atefeh Razazan, Prashantha Karunakar, Sidharth P. Mishra, Shailesh Sharma, Brandi Miller, Shalini Jain and Hariom Yadav, 5 October 2021, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2021.735933
The USF Health-led research was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the NIH-funded Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
"This Basil....This....Smack on Head!"
It’s abundant is some varieties of pot too...
https://www.trulieve.com/discover/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-fenchol-and-its-benefits
He’s from Barcelona
Bttt
“Fenchol, a plant-derived compound that gives basil its aromatic SCENT, ... ‘We also want to know whether a potent dose of either basil or fenchol, if it could be delivered by NASAL SPRAY, would be a quicker way to get the compound into the brain.’” (emphasis added)
Anyone else leaping to the same conclusion I am?
Vaping?..........................
Pretty sure that pot isn’t a net plus for brain health.
ISRIB looks very encouraging.
LOL... I was more thinking about a nice, aromatic kitchen. But sure, I guess...
Marijuana linked to alzheimer’s.
... also, to making alzheimer’s redundant.
So I make garlic free pesto. Not as good but still tasty.
That’s too bad. Its a little bit like being allergic to sex
lol almost as bad- I used to eat raw cloves of garlic back when i was on health kick- never bothered me at all, then one day it did- and got worse as tiem went on- Now even the smell of it will start to make me a bit dizzy- Why couldn’t i be allergic to broccoli instead? lol
Yeah, i gotta avoid sauces with tomato in them too because of ulcers and a muscle issue which it aggravates, so i can’t eat the foods i loved anymore- italian foods, pizza, spaghetti, etc- i have to make white sauce for them or eat them with just butter and salt and pepper- while everyone else gets the lovely red sauce with garlic in it :(
An order of pesto, please.
“Garlic and Basil - the two best ingredients.”
They’re both main ingredients of pesto.
I think I’m going to make some creamy pesto pasta tonight... If I remember.😀
Recipe to make basil tea:
Do you love basil as much as I do? Then you most likely have planted lots of basil in your garden or pots and by midsummer you should expect lots of fresh basil luring you with its minty fresh aroma!
You’re probably wondering what are you going to do with so much basil, right? Well, make this simple basil tea recipe or store some for winter days. Here we show you a simple but delicious recipe for how to make basil tea.
Link to this and other basil tea recipes:
https://theseamanmom.com/fresh-basil-tea-recipe/
Wonder what the 14 other candidates were?
Yes, ISRIB looks somewhat encouraging ... in mice. In humans? Who knows? Even if future research shows it to be effective in humans to some degree, it's still another decade before it might be made available. Even if it eventually becomes available in a decade, will it only temporarily reduce symptoms? Or, will it be the first-ever partial cure?
Biogen recently got FDA approval for its alzheimers drug ... and that was the first alzheimers-related drug to get FDA approval in the past 1 1/2 decades. And a substantial part of the scientific community believes the FDA should have rejected it. Even worse, several FDA advisory board members resigned over that drug's FDA approval. So, yeah, there's extremely little progress being made. To me, it sure sounds like: Very looooooong way to go ...
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