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.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (44 K)Download as PowerPoint slide