Interesting new data published today regarding the curious connection between Parkinson’s disease and melanoma.
It was interesting because the data suggests that there is no genetic connection. No obvious connection that is.
In this post we will review the study and discuss what it all means.
Melanoma. Source: Wikipedia
Question 1.: why are people with Parkinson’s disease are 2-8 times more likely to develop melanoma – the skin cancer – than people without Parkinson’s?
Question 2.: why are people with melanoma almost 3 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than someone without melanoma?
This topic is an old favourite here at the SoPD, and we have discussed it several times in previous posts (Click here and here to read those posts). It is a really good mystery. A lot of people have looked at this issue and the connection between the two conditions has not been immediately forthcoming.
When the genetics mutations of both conditions were previously analysed, it was apparent that none of the known Parkinson’s mutations make someone more susceptible to melanoma, and likewise none of the melanoma-associated genetic mutations make a person vulnerable to Parkinson’s disease (Meng et al 2012;Dong et al 2014; Elincx-Benizri et al 2014).
So what was published today?
New genetic data! Rather than simplifying things, however, this new data has simply made the mystery….well, more of a mystery. The publication in question is:
Title: Rare variants analysis of cutaneous malignant melanoma genes in Parkinson’s disease.
Authors: Lubbe SJ, Escott-Price V, Brice A, Gasser T, Pittman AM, Bras J, Hardy J, Heutink P, Wood NM, Singleton AB, Grosset DG, Carroll CB, Law MH, Demenais F, Iles MM; Melanoma Meta-Analysis Consortium, Bishop DT, Newton-Bishop J, Williams NM, Morris HR; International Parkinson’s Disease Genomics Consortium.
Journal: Neurobiol Aging. 2016 Jul 28.
PMID: 27640074 (This article is OPEN ACCESS if you would like to read it)
Given that previous studies have suggested that there are no obvious genetic mutations connecting Parkinson’s disease with melanoma, the researchers in this study looked for very rare genetic variations in 29 melanoma-associated genes. They did this analysis on a very large pool of genetic data, from 6875 people with Parkinson’s disease and 6065 normal healthy control subjects.
What the researchers found was only very weak connections between two conditions, based on only a few of these genetic mutations (none of which were statistically significant, which means that they could be due to chance).
One very rare genetic mutation in a gene called TYR p.V275F is very interesting. It was found to be more common in people with Parkinson’s disease than controls in 3 independent groups of data. The gene TYR produces a protein called Tyrosinase, which an important ‘rate-limiting enzyme’ in biological production in both neuromelanin and dopamine (the chemical critically associated with Parkinson’s disease).
So what does this mean?
This data suggests that the connection between Parkinson’s disease and melanoma is not due to a known shared genetic mutation. This conclusion, however, leaves open many alternative possibilities. One such possibility involves the vast pieces of human DNA that are described as ‘non-coding‘. These are sections of DNA that will produce a piece of RNA, but that RNA will not be used to produce a protein (as is normal in biology 101). That non-coding RNA will, however, have functions in regulating the activity on sections of DNA or other RNAs (yeah, I know. It’s complicated. Even for me!). Importantly, these non-coding RNA can play a role in diseases. For example, it was discovered a few years ago that a non-coding RNA called BACE1-AS is produced in very large amounts in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (Click here for more on this). We are simply speculating here though.
The scientists who published the research today suggest that they will further investigate and better characterise the interesting link between the gene TYR and Parkinson’s disease, and they will now broaden their analysis of genetic regions that could be influencing the curious connection between Parkinson’s disease and melanoma. Rather than simply focusing on known genetic mutations (common or rare), they will start to dig deeper into our DNA to see what else may underlie the connection between these two conditions.
Watch this space.
The banner for today’s post was sourced from the Huffington Post
The Science of Parkinson's 