Teresa De Enrique

Capstone: Biology of Disease

Dr. Jonathan Karpel

Brain, Microbe and Gene therapy

Introduction

             As we all know, everything in this world is somehow connected, and so are this three categories: brain, microbe and gene therapy. These three different branches are connected due to them all mainly focusing on human health. Having a good healthy life is not just having a good healthy microbe environment in our body, but also not having any type of injury that can affect our physical and mental state, such as brain injury. Moreover, if we would be able to perform gene therapy techniques then we could probably also help improve human health and suppress as much deadly disease as possible, such as cancer.

Brain

Focusing on brain injuries I specially want to talk about: neurological disorders (Parkinson), storage disorders (gaucher), personality and mood disorders (paranoia, bi-polar, compulsive), developmental (autism) and prion diseases (kuru). Also, multiple sclerosis (MS), which is a slowly progressive neurological disease that affects the brain, spinal cord and the optic nerves in the eye. Usually it shows in patients between the ages of 20-40 years old, women have a higher rate than men. Some people suffering from multiple sclerosis can have mild symptoms and don’t need to be treated and others show a greater consequence, such as problems with vision, muscle control, balance and trouble to do the daily task normally. Sometimes, is very easy to mistake sclerosis symptoms with other health problems, but if you keep getting the same symptoms over and over and they keep getting worse then is recommendable to go to the doctor and get checked out. When you start showing numbness or tingling sensation in the arms, legs, face and one side of the body, this could be the first symptom of a nerve damage from sclerosis. Normally, these signs disappear by themselves, but they can also be just signs of not having enough blood flow or just from laying or standing in the same position for a long period of time. If there is a sudden numbness on just one side of the body then it could be a signal of a stroke, which means immediately doctor assistant. Moreover, patients suffering from MS for a long time they can start showing symptoms of lack of memory, focus and slow thinking.  The main drug prescribe during multiple sclerosis are corticosteroids.

                  Huntingston’s disease is another disease that has an effect on the mental, physical and behavioral aspect. This disease causes the continually breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. It usually starts showing symptoms in the 30s-40s but it can actually emerge earlier, which will result in different and harder symptoms with a faster progress of the disease. Huntingston’s is autosomal dominant disorder meaning that it only needs a defected gene for a person to develop this disease. If we were to be situated in a situation where one parent has a defective gene, then this one could pass a copy of the defected or healthy gene, give a 50% chance for their child to inherit the gene that give rise to the genetic disorder (huntingston disease). Parents being at risk of exposing their child to this disorder have the advantage of meeting with a genetic counselor and this one will offer them two options; have their child normally or consider prenatal testing for the gene of in vitro fertilization with donor sperm or egg. Some of the main symptoms from suffering from huntingston disease are; muscle problems, slowor abnormal eye movements, difficulty with the physical production of speech or swallowing, difficulty focusing on tasks, lack of flexibility, slow in processing thought, difficulty in learning, insomnia, fatigue and loss of energy, social withdrawal and feeling or irritability, sadness and apathy. There is medications that can help reduce the symptoms but the treatment cannot prevent the behavioral, mental and physical decrease associated with this disorder.

                  Experience brain injuries does not just affect your brain physically but also can show changes in your behavior, these ones can either be drastic or very small changes. This happens because when there is a damage at a specific area of the brain might leave us vulnerable to memory lost, physical aggression, impulse control and uncontrolled emotions. This could sum up by showing an effect in performing daily tasks, and be able to socialize normally. Having brain injuries can also show psychiatric issues such as depression, substance abuse, anxiety and compulsive disorder. In order to help people with their mental disorder the better option is to obligate them to go see a psychiatric and psychologist or even though make them join a group of people suffering from the same problems. This group will show them that they are not allow, giving them hope to recover to their normal mental state.

                  One of the main brain injuries that we can find everyday more and more, are concussions. A concussion is when someone gets a hit on the head and this sudden hit causes the brain to bounce around or twist making changes in the chemical side of the brain. This brain injury does not show external signs but it does show loss of consciousness. Having a concussion can have effects on memory, trouble to speech, balance and muscle coordination. Some people do not actually think that experience from a concussion is something very dangerous, but that’s wrong even if the concussion is mild we should still take care of it and be diagnosed with the usual protocol by a doctor. The first thing a doctor or athletic trainer would ask the injured person is if they know their name, month/year and where they are. This type of brain injury is the most typically sport injury that athletes are expose too. Concussion symptoms should have to be permanent but they can actually stay for a long period of time.

Gene Therapy

Nowadays, we have a more advanced and improved society. We can manipulate and “fix” human genes such as preventing the appearance of diseases (cancer, Parkinson, down syndrome, etc.) or choosing how a baby’s physically features. However, even though we have more options and are able to give our children a better future, there are still some concerns about the ethics of manipulating genes. Some people think that changing what is naturally supposed to happen is considered playing with “God.” We are playing with the future, and there could be consequences.

There are a lot people who are still against the manipulation of human genes because they think that changing the genes that someone was supposed to express could have a negative impact on evolution. Manipulating the genes of an unborn child and making them as we desire- blue eyes, blonde hair, athleticism, no genes expressing deadly disease- could show an effect on evolution because we are playing with the fittest and unfitted genes. This is forcing the expression of only certain genes, which will end up showing similar genes and no occurrence of mutations. In turn, evolution will stop happening. Evolution will be affected because there will be no variation between individuals, and natural selection will not be able to select the fittest organism because all of them will be identical.

Moreover, if everyone was able to change their gene expression, such as delating genes that can develop cancer or other deadly disease, everyone would be able to live a long and healthy life. This could greatly affect the human population on earth. I believe there should be a balance between life and death. If we try to find ways to cheat death, this will cause strain on the development of humans and the fundamentals of life. As the population increase, so does demand for resources such as food, hospitals, housing, assistance and money. This would be complicated because we already have a huge population; if we push earth’s limits then we will cause strains to society. People would go into a panic because of the lack of resources needed to survive. Therefore, there should be a balance between death and life in order to have an organized and healthy society.

Though I do believe there are negative aspects, I have also considered the positive side. Improvement is always beneficial. It allows us to gain a better understanding of the nature of diseases in order to take action to help protect and save people from these diseases. Being able to understand this advances our knowledge and ability to prevent these diseases from occurring. Eventually, diseases will no longer be a problem for society. It will also result in an increased life expectancy as a reflection of a healthy society. By preventing diseases from attacking people, many will save money in medical expenses.

Microbe

            The human body is invaded with many microbes that are necessary for the immune system, in order to remain strong. These microbes are responsible for fighting diseases, viruses and any type of infection that the body is expose to. Usually, during our postnatal maturation is where we find a bacterial colonization that provides the free-pathogen body with the necessary microbes to have a good immune system when the body gets older.

The “Postnatal microbial colonization programs the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal system for stress response in mice” research was looking if this postnatal microbial colonization affects the development of the brain plasticity and the immune response. In order to perform this investigation, they observed how hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) reacts to stress by looking at gnotobiotic mice, germfree (GF) and specific pathogen free (SPF). The results showed that GF mice experience a decrease in brain-derived neurotrophic factor expression levels in the hippocampus compared to SPF mice. Also, ATCH response to stress was higher in GF mice than SPF mice, but not when being expose to ether. Moreover, the feedback of HPA stress by GF mice was everted with the use of Bifidobacterium infantis, while monoassociation with enteropathogenic Escherichia coli strengthens the response to stress without its mutant strain. In addition, the increase of HPA response in GF mice was fixed by reconstitution with SPF faeces at an early stage rather than at a larger stage. These results confirm that microbial colonization during postnatal maturation are essential on the development of the HPA stress response.

            The main focus of this paper is to highlight how important is to have the “good” bacteria in our body so that we can have a strong and effective immune system when fighting virus infections. The main finding of this research is that being expose to microbes during early stages in life is essential for having a strong immune system when we being to age. Having read this article, people should have in mind that when they have babies being too protective and not allowing them to be exposed to environmental microbes can cause health issues, both in the present and in the future.

Conclusion

            In conclusion, we should all consider the importance of having a balance between our mental and physical health. Having the necessary microbes is something very important for our immune system to work correctly, which in turn is going to help us avoid illness. Also, taking care of our brain is not something to joke around about. The smallest brain injury, such as a mild concussion, can show effects on our brain and changes on our behavior. In order to have a good and enjoyable life, we have to have a good balance between mind, spirt and body. Finally, being able to have a backup for disease, such as gene therapy, can help thousands of people suffering from a huge amount of pain. We should really appreciate that everyday there is people trying to find solutions to help us have a better and healthier life.