Is there a role for Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis in Parkinson's disease?

• It has been hypothesized a link between Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) infection and Parkinson disease.
• Several studies reported the role of Zn2 + in facilitating aggregation of Aβ, tau and α-synuclein proteins. ZnT10 has also been studied in patients with neurological disorders and Parkinsonism showing that two different homozygous frame shift mutations in ZnT10 have been implicated in these pathologies.
• Different studies have shown an homology between human ZnT8 and MAP 3865c protein that is involved in type 1 diabetes.
• The possibility that PD patients could be infected by MAP was investigated in this study along with the possibility that it may trigger the disease by a molecular mimicry mechanism.

In Parkinson's disease (PD) ZnT proteins play an important role. Zinc is a co-factor of numerous enzymes and stabilizes the tertiary structure of several proteins. Nothing is known about previous infections mediated by Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP). We evaluated if a previous infection with MAP could induce the production of antibodies that cross-reacted with the Znt homologous antigenic peptides associated to Parkinson. The humoral response toward MAP3865c peptides, ZnT3 and ZnT10 was evaluated. The hypothesis of cross-reactivity needs to be confirmed; we have observed the presence of MAP in PD patients by PCR, positivity to MAP3865c peptides, therefore MAP infection but not cross-reaction with human homologous Znt proteins.

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