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Glutathion beschermt tegen de nadelige gevolgen van
uitlaatgassen.
Glutathion beschermt tegen de nadelige gevolgen van
uitlaatgassen, doch 50% van de mensen mist een bepaald gen om voldoende
Glutathion zelf te maken en hebben hiervoor aanvulling nodig.
The risk of
developing respiratory allergies from exposure to diesel emissions depends
largely on genetics, according to a study funded by the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH).
Given their
findings, researchers estimate that up to 50 percent of the United States
population could be in jeopardy of experiencing health problems related to air
pollution. The study is published in the Jan. 10 issue of the British journal
The Lancet.
"This
important study adds to previous data that suggest how modern environmental
factors interact with the body's defenses to produce 'airway' diseases
considered rare before the advent of industrialized society," says Anthony
S. Fauci, M.D., director of NIAID.
"The knowledge
provided by this work will help us identify people who are susceptible to the
deleterious effects of diesel emissions on the clinical course of asthma and hay
fever," says Kenneth Adams, Ph.D., who oversees asthma research funded by
NIAID. "It will also help accelerate development of drugs to treat and
prevent these diseases."
This study also
received support from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,
another NIH component.
The authors of the
study examined how a family of antioxidant-related genes--GSTM1, GSTT1 and
GSTP1--reacts to diesel exhaust particles, a common air pollutant. The body
generates antioxidants to detoxify harmful particles and limit the corresponding
allergic reaction.
Researchers sampled
the DNA of volunteers who are allergic to ragweed to find which forms of the
genes they had. The participants were then given doses of ragweed through the
nose, followed by either a placebo or quantities of diesel exhaust particles
equivalent to breathing the air in Los Angeles, CA, for 40 hours.
The mix of ragweed
and diesel exhaust triggered greater allergic responses than ragweed alone.
Additionally, the diesel particles caused volunteers who lacked the
antioxidant-producing form of the GSTM1 gene to have significantly greater
allergic responses, compared to the other participants. Up to 50 percent of the
U.S. population does not have this form of the GSTM1 gene. Within the group that
lacked GSTM1, those who had a particular variant of the GSTP1 gene experienced
even greater allergic reactions. Researchers estimate that 15 to 20 percent of
the U.S. population falls into this category.
"Diesel
emissions can trigger allergic symptoms, but the genetic factors involved in the
process are quite complex," says David Diaz-Sanchez, Ph.D., assistant
professor in the Division of Immunology and Allergy at the University of
California Los Angeles, who co-authored the study with scientists from the
University of Southern California. "Our findings suggest that people who
lack the genes to make key antioxidants may have difficulty fighting the harmful
effects of air pollution."
Dr. Diaz-Sanchez
says that he and the other researchers will work to find other genes involved in
pollution-related health problems such as asthma, lung cancer and heart disease,
with the goal of discovering possible treatments and preventions. "We are
focused on investigating ways we can overcome this genetic deficiency," he
says. "This may be accomplished by either giving people drugs that replace
the role of the genes or by boosting the body's natural defenses."
NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. NIAID supports basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose and treat infectious and immune-mediated illnesses, including HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, illness from potential agents of bioterrorism, tuberculosis, malaria, autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies