“Isn’t this amazing?” Dr. Jim Croom, a professor of nutrition and physiology at N.C. State said recently. “You never know what will happen. Here I am investigating animal nutrition, looking for better ways to feed people, and I end up working on Alzheimer’s.”
Croom summarized an article he recently submitted to the peer-reviewed Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry. “Simply put,” he said, “if you can safely remove aluminum from a person’s brain, that person may not develop Alzheimer’s-like disease.”
Croom, whose research is centered in the Poultry Science Department of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, recently presented his work on aluminum toxicity at a colloquium at Keele University in northwest England. That presentation led to his most recent journal submission.
Following up on the colloquium, Croom has begun cooperative experiments with several universities. He will furnish brains from mice with Down syndrome/Alzheimer’s-like traits that were treated with a protein, peptide YY, to Keele and the universities of Virginia and California-Irvine for more detailed studies. Croom’s research has shown that PYY increases poultry’s ability to absorb feed and led to N.C. State University’s obtaining two patents for its use in both domestic animals and humans.
Croom’s current research on Alzheimer’s began with his attempts to increase feed utilization by poultry by administering a small protein found in the digestive systems of both humans and animals.
Then a wild card popped up: Croom found that peptide YY decreases brain aluminum.
Aluminum has been under study as a contributing factor in Alzheimer’s development. The metal appears in higher-than-usual levels in the brains of humans with Alzheimer’s, as well as of those with Down syndrome. Almost half of those with Down syndrome, a genetic disorder, develop Alzheimer’s by the time they are 40. In North Carolina, one of every 800 people has Down syndrome.
As a comparative nutritionist, one who works with many types of animals — including humans — Croom also investigates the nutrition and metabolism of Down syndrome.
This work led to his discovery that the injection of human PYY into mice with a condition similar to Down syndrome caused their brain aluminum levels to drop by up to 80 percent.
The only way to remove aluminum and other metals from the body is to bind, or chelate, it to a substance the body can readily excrete, Croom said.
PYY acts more quickly and may be safer than traditional chelates. It has been administered to humans without any side effects in doses lower than those he has used in his mice studies, he said.
Croom’s work may point to potential new treatments for this debilitating disease. N.C. State and the Medical University of South Carolina are filing for a use patent on PYY. Croom’s collaborators on the project are Dr. Eugene Eisen of the College’s Animal Science Department and Dr. Ian Taylor, head of the medicine department at MUSC.
“Our work has been indirectly confirmed by Dr. K.S. Rao, of the Central Food Technological Institute, Mysore, India,” Croom said.
Rao, who reported his research recently in a new peer-reviewed journal, The Alzheimer’s Report, also has conducted research at the University of Virginia. He has shown that a closely related sister peptide of PYY, neuropeptide Y, a potent appetite regulator in the brain, directly binds aluminum in test tubes. And rabbits injected with aluminum have less neuropeptide Y. PYY and neuropeptide Y have a 70 percent structural similarity, Croom said.
Croom’s studies are supported in part by grants totaling $70,000 from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. of Trisomy 21 Research Inc. of Los Angeles, a private foundation that sponsors research on Down syndrome-related issues. N.C. State provides in-kind support for the research.
— Art Latham
