Alzheimer’s increases the risk of developing glioblastoma – the most common type of brain tumor – but decreases the risk of developing lung cancer . This is what points out a study carried out by researchers from the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) and published in the journal Scientific Reports . Alfonso Valencia, from the CNIO and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), has led the work.
The study has been in charge of analyzing the biological processes that underlie these comorbidity relationships –coexistence of two or more diseases in the same individual, usually related–, which can be direct (when suffering from one disease makes the appearance of another more plausible) or inverse (when suffering from one implies a lower risk of suffering from the other) -. Comorbidity is related to the aging of the population , with the increase in our life expectancy, since it gives rise to many people suffering from several diseases simultaneously.
This CNIO research has thoroughly analyzed the relationship between Alzheimer’s and glioblastoma , taking lung cancer data as a reference. “The analysis of glioblastoma, which has a direct comorbidity with Alzheimer’s and, moreover, originates in the same organ, has allowed us to better understand the molecular comorbidity relationships between Alzheimer’s and cancer and eliminate tissue-dependent biases”, emphasizes Jon Sánchez-Valle, first author of the work.
The researchers, after working on more than 1,000 samples of patients with these diseases, identified 198 genes with significantly altered function in these three diseases, and 112 of them showed a similar pattern in Alzheimer’s and glioblastoma and the opposite in lung cancer. .
As confirmed by the authors of the work, mitochondrial dysfunction plays a very important role in the development of Alzheimer’s and could also influence an increased risk of developing brain tumors in these patients due to the chronic inflammation of the brain they suffer.
At the same time, as explained by the CNIO in an informative note, “the decrease in energy intake and the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) due to the alteration of mitochondrial function would in turn be related to protection against cancer of lung in Alzheimer’s patients “.
Why is this study important? Among other reasons, because the results obtained could help us find new uses for drugs that already exist as well as new therapeutic strategies to treat these diseases based on the specific genomic information of each patient.
References:
A molecular hypothesis to explain direct and inverse co-morbidities between Alzheimer’s Disease, Glioblastoma and Lung cancer. Jon Sánchez-Valle, Héctor Tejero, Kristina Ibáñez, José Luis Portero, Martin Krallinger, Fátima Al-Shahrour, Rafael Tabarés-Seisdedos, Anaïs Baudot & Alfonso Valencia (Scientific Reports 2017). DOI: 10.1038 / s41598-017-04400-6
