. This work was recently published in a leading international journal
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“Many people experience daily digestive problems, such as chronic constipation, yet we still don’t understand the cause,” said Lauren Jones, lead author and senior research fellow at the College of Medicine. cause most of those problems. Community health.
“Our study identified Piezo2 in the cells lining the human gastrointestinal tract, allowing them to sense physical stimuli, such as touch or pressure, that would occur when awake.” The cells will then respond by releasing serotonin to stimulate intestinal contractions and push the food along.”
Last year, international researchers Artem Padaputian and David Julius were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on the receptors responsible for touch and temperature, including the discovery out of Piezo2, now it’s our responsibility to feel the light hitting our skin.
With potential clinical implications, the Flinders team found that Piezo2 levels in the gut decrease with age, and that if only the protein is removed from the intestinal serotonin cells, intestinal motility decreases and constipation occurs.
The authors say this may be a potential contributing factor to age-related constipation and provide a possible treatment.
“Age-related constipation affects 1 in 2 adults over the age of 80, while constipation usually affects almost everyone at some point in their lives,” says Ms.
“It is therefore critically important that we increase our understanding of the underlying mechanisms so that targeted solutions can be found to improve the quality of life of the many people who daily suffer from sugar disorders. bowels, including constipation.”
“This study provides the foundations for both further research and the development of highly specific treatments to reduce the impact of constipation.”
Although more research is needed to systematically link Piezo2 with constipation, the authors say the overall study represents a significant improvement in our understanding of gut physiology, opening New target for the treatment of digestive problems.
“More specifically, we now have the potential to create treatments that are taken orally and directly act only on these cells located in the gut, thereby dramatically reducing the effects of the disease,” said Ms. Side effects are common in many modern drugs.
Piezo2-dependent diminished tactile sensitivity occurs in the elderly intestine and slows down gastrointestinal transit in rats by Lauren A. Jones, Byungchang Jin, Alyce M. Martin, Lai Wei, Flinders Gastrological Consortium, Seungil Ro and Damien J. Keating to be announced in the magazine Gastroenterology. The research was supported by an Australian Research Council grant to Professor Keating.
Source: Medindia
