Zika virus might also damage brain cells in adults

The recent study has proved that the Zika virus might also damage brain cells in adults. The affected adult neurons are those used to replace lost and damaged neurons in adult brains which are highly important when learning.

Until now, the focus of the Zika virus was only on how it affects the fetal brain development and on how pregnant women should avoid getting infected by canceling their visits to areas where the virus was installed.

The study that was conducted on mice was the first one to analyze the effects that the virus has on the adult brain. As the finding reveal, getting infected with the Zika virus might not be as harmless as people believe. The infection with the mosquito-borne Zika virus may injure adult brain cells.

However, more studies must be conducted to find out how this damage on adult brain cells has long-term biological implications or how it can potentially affect a person’s behavior.

Sujan Shresta, a professor at the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology believes that it is a certainty that the virus can enter the brain cells of the adult and have a destructive effect.

Researchers focused on the early forms of brain cells that go on to become neurons, called neural progenitor cells and often considered them the stem cells of the brain. By attacking these neural progenitor cells in children, Zika causes microcephaly which leads to babies being born with unusually small heads, brain damage, and disabilities.

Adult brains also contain some of the niches of these neural progenitor cells which fill up neurons in parts of the brain linked to learning and memory.

By using fluorescent biomarkers in mice, researchers saw that the adult neural progenitor cells were vulnerable to the Zika infection and were killed by the virus. It is still unclear what could be the effect the virus has on the adult human brain over time.

During previous studies, researchers proved that the key to the brain’s ability to adapt and change is integrating new neurons into learning and memory circuits. Without this process, the cognitive evolution declines and could lead to Alzheimer’s disease or other similar conditions.

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Brain scans have revealed that the brains of obese middle-aged individuals look as if they are 10 years older than the brains of slimmer adults of matching ages. Scientists found that for some strange reasons weight-challenged people in the middle-age shed more white matter than people with a normal weight.

Study authors believe that obesity paired with other factors such as high cholesterol may alter the brain’s structure and speed up aging processes in the brain.

A group of researchers at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, found that the brain volume of the overweight and obese are reduced in middle-age at a faster pace than in the people with a normal weight.

White matter is normally lost due to aging processes but such an acceleration was only noticed in patients with severe neuro-degenerative conditions such as dementia. Fortunately, British researchers haven’t found a link between obesity and faster cognitive decline.

The study involved 473 healthy individuals of whom about a half had a body mass index (BMI) higher than 25, i.e. they were either overweight (BMI > 25) or obese (BMI > 30). The average age of the group was 54 with the oldest participant being 87-years-old.

Scientists found that overweight participants lost more white matter than their leaner peers through MRI scans. Brain imaging revealed that obese people had less white matter tissue than people of the same age but with an average weight.

In younger people, the differences were not as blatant as in the middle aged group, researchers noted. This suggests that young people can still have time to change their lifestyle and prevent their brains from prematurely aging.

The research team cannot explain the phenomenon but they have some hypotheses. For instance, obese participants also had a history of high cholesterol, which had been tied by past research to an acceleration in white matter loss as well.

There is also the hypothesis that fat cells may promote inflammatory processes in the brain which could speed up aging processes.

Regardless of the cause, researchers said that their findings are important in countries where population is aging and obesity has reached epidemic proportions. The study may also underline the possibility of obesity to raise the risk of developing other neurodegenerative conditions.

The study results were announced late last month in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

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