Year: 2016

Epigenetics and addiction

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Epigenetics, Memory , ,

Dr. Moshe Szyf of McGill University explains current rodent epigenetic research into addiction in this October 2016 interview.

“What happens during the time when there’s no drug [cocaine] exposure, there’s just the memory of the original drug exposure? And we found huge epigenetics changes during this time, the time of abstinence.

It actually suggests that abstinence cannot cure addiction. It might even aggravate it.

We found out that timing is very important. Pairing the drug [a DNA methylation inhibitor] administration with the cue was critical with reversing the epigenetic effects and the behavioral effects.

Epigenetic treatment should theoretically reprogram the animal to forget or erase the epigenetic consequences of the initial exposure. And therefore the animal should be protected from addiction for a long time if indeed we found what we thought we did with epigenetic reprogramming.”

https://www.epigenomicsnet.com/users/3002-georgia-patey/videos/13003-video2

On Primal Therapy with Drs. Art and France Janov

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Brain development, Cerebrum, Epigenetics, Limbic system, Lower brain, Memory, Neurochemicals, Primal Therapy, Stress , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Experiential feeling therapy addressing the pain of the lack of love.

What do our time preferences reveal about our pasts?

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work

This 2016 Swedish human study found:

“Time discounting significantly predicts criminal activity and that high discount rates predict crime more strongly at the extensive margin rather than for total crime. The link is much stronger for property crime and among males with low intelligence.”

The subjects were 13-year-old students in Stockholm County who were asked as a part of a school survey in 1966:

“If you had to choose between SEK 900 [USD 138] now versus SEK 9,000 [USD 1,380] in five years, what would you choose?

  1. Certainly SEK 900 now
  2. Probably SEK 900 now
  3. Cannot choose
  4. Probably SEK 9,000 in five years
  5. Certainly SEK 9,000 in five years”

A choice of Answer 1 to get something immediately and not get ten times the nominal value in five years corresponds to a 58.4% annual discount rate.

These answers to a hypothetical monetary trade-off were correlated to other measures such as intelligence and father’s income. However, the researchers didn’t investigate possible origins:

“We focus on the predictive value of time discounting and avoid claims about causality.”

We know from proper economic theory that time preferences are part of human nature. Discount rates and money don’t necessarily have to be involved because humans will value something today more than a similar item in the future.

I’d guess that most of the answers reflected conditioned behaviors. Did the 13-year olds who answered #1 even roughly calculate the problem? I wonder if they felt they would still be alive at age 18?

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/22/6160.full “Time discounting and criminal behavior”

The hypothalamus couples with the brainstem to cause migraines

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Brain development, Brain hemispheres, Brainstem, Cortisol, Epigenetics, Hippocampus, Hypothalamus, Limbic system, Lower brain, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Stress

This 2016 German human study with one subject found:

“The hypothalamus to be the primary generator of migraine attacks which, due to specific interactions with specific areas in the higher and lower brainstem, could alter the activity levels of the key regions of migraine pathophysiology.”

The subject underwent daily fMRI scans, and procedures to evoke brain activity. She didn’t take any medications, and suffered three migraine attacks during the 31-day experimental period.

Neuroskeptic commented:

“The dorsal pons has previously been found to be hyperactive during migraine. It’s been dubbed the brain’s ‘migraine generator.’ Schulte and May’s data suggest that this is not entirely true – rather, it looks like the hypothalamus may be the true generator of migraine, while the brainstem could be a downstream mediator of the disorder.

A hypothalamic origin of migraines would help to explain some of the symptoms of the disorder, such as changes in appetite, that often accompany the headaches.”

The above graphic looks to me like the result of feedback mechanisms that either didn’t exist or inadequately handled the triggering event. Other examples of the hypothalamus lacking feedback or being involved in a deviated feedback loop include:

There are many unanswered questions with a one-person study, of course. Addressing the cause of this painful condition would find out when, where, and how a person’s hypothalamus became modified to express migraine tendencies.

I’d guess that migraine tendencies may appear as early as the first trimester of pregnancy, given that a highly functional hypothalamus is needed for survival and development in our earliest lives. Gaining as much familial and historical information as possible from the person would be necessary steps in therapies that address migraine causes.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/05/22/pinpointing-origins-of-migraine/ “Pinpointing the Origins of Migraine in the Brain”

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/139/7/1987/2464241 “The migraine generator revisited: continuous scanning of the migraine cycle over 30 days and three spontaneous attacks”

As mentioned in How to cure the ultimate causes of migraines? comments are turned off for this post due to it somehow becoming a magnet for spammers. Readers can comment on that post instead.

Genetic imprinting, sleep, and parent-offspring conflict

gettingwell4 5+ stars Premium, Amygdala, Beliefs, Brain development, Cerebrum, Epigenetics, Hypothalamus, Limbic system, Memory, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin , , ,

This 2016 Italian review subject was the interplay of genetic imprinting and sleep regulation:

“Sleep results from the synergism between at least two major processes: a homeostatic regulatory mechanism that depends on the accumulation of the sleep drive during wakefulness, and a circadian self-sustained mechanism that sets the time for sleeping and waking throughout the 24-hour daily cycle.

REM sleep apparently contravenes the restorative aspects of sleep; however, the function of this ‘paradoxical’ state remains unknown. Although REM sleep may serve important functions, a lack of REM sleep has no major consequences for survival in humans; however, severe detrimental effects have been observed in rats.

Opposite imprinting defects at chromosome 15q11–13 are responsible for opposite sleep phenotypes as well as opposite neurodevelopmental abnormalities, namely the Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and the Angelman syndrome (AS). Whilst the PWS is due to loss of paternal expression of alleles, the AS is due to loss of maternal expression.

Maternal additions or paternal deletions of alleles at chromosome 15q11–13 are characterized by temperature control abnormalities, excessive sleepiness, and specific sleep architecture changes, particularly REM sleep deficits. Conversely, paternal additions or maternal deletions at chromosome 15q11–13 are characterized by reductions in sleep and frequent and prolonged night wakings.

The ‘genomic imprinting hypothesis of sleep’ remains in its infancy, and several aspects require attention and further investigation.”

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006004 “Genomic Imprinting: A New Epigenetic Perspective of Sleep Regulation”

A commenter to the review referenced a 2014 study Troubled sleep: night waking, breastfeeding, and parent–offspring conflict that received several reactions, including one by the same commenter. Here are a few quotes from the study author’s consolidated response:

“‘Troubled sleep’ had two major purposes. The first was to draw attention to the oppositely perturbed sleep of infants with PWS and AS and explore its evolutionary implications. The involvement of imprinted genes suggests that infant sleep has been subject to antagonistic selection on genes of maternal and paternal origin with genes of maternal origin favoring less disrupted sleep.

My second major purpose was a critique of the idea that children would be happier, healthier and better-adjusted if we could only return to natural methods of child care. This way of thinking is often accompanied by a belief that modern practices put children at risk of irrevocable harm.

The truth of such claims is ultimately an empirical question, but the claims are sometimes presented as if they had the imprimatur of evolutionary biology. This appeal to scientific authority often seems to misrepresent what evolutionary theory predicts: that which evolves is not necessarily that which is healthy.

Why should pregnancy not be more efficient and more robust than other physiological systems, rather than less? Crucial checks, balances and feedback controls are lacking in the shared physiology of the maternal–fetal unit.

Infant sleep may similarly lack the exquisite organization of systems without evolutionary conflict. Postnatal development, like prenatal development, is subject to difficulties of evolutionarily credible communication between mothers and offspring.”

The author addressed comments related to attachment theory:

“Infants are classified as having insecure-resistant attachment if they maintain close proximity to their mother after a brief separation while expressing negative emotions and exhibiting contradictory behaviors that seem to both encourage and resist interaction. By contrast, infants are classified as having insecure-avoidant attachment if they do not express negative emotion and avoid contact with their mother after reunion.

Insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant behaviors might be considered antithetic accommodations of infants to less responsive mothers; the former associated with reduced demands on maternal attention, the latter with increased demands. A parallel pattern is seen in effects on maternal sleep. Insecure-avoidant infants wake their mothers less frequently, and insecure-resistant infants more frequently, than securely attached infants.

Parent–child interactions are transformed once children can speak. Infants with more fragmented sleep at 6 months had less language at 18 and 30 months.

Infants with AS have unconsolidated sleep and never learn to speak. The absence of language in the absence of expression of one or more MEGs [maternally expressed imprinted genes] is compatible with a hypothesis in which earlier development of language reduces infant demands on mothers.”

Regarding cultural differences:

“China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have both high rates of bed-sharing and high rates of problematic sleep compared with western countries. Within this grouping, however, more children sleep in their own room but parents report fewer sleep problems in Hong Kong than in either China or Taiwan.

Clearly, cultural differences are significant, and the causes of this variation should be investigated, but the differences cannot be summarized simply as ‘west is worst’.

The fitness [genetic rather than physical fitness] gain to mothers of an extra child and the benefits for infants of longer IBIs [interbirth intervals] are substantial. These selective forces are unlikely to be orders of magnitude weaker than the advantages of lactase persistence, yet the selective forces associated with dairying have been sufficient to result in adaptive genetic differentiation among populations.

The possibility of gene–culture coevolution should not be discounted for behaviors associated with infant-care practices.”

Regarding a mismatch between modern and ancestral environments:

“I remain skeptical of a tendency to ascribe most modern woes to incongruence between our evolved nature and western cultural practices. We did not evolve to be happy or healthy but to leave genetic descendants, and an undue emphasis on mismatch risks conflating health and fitness.

McKenna [a commenter] writes ‘It isn’t really nice nor maybe even possible to fool mother nature.’ Here I disagree. Our genetic adaptations often try to fool us into doing things that enhance fitness at costs to our happiness.

Our genes do not care about us and we should have no compunction about fooling them to deliver benefits without serving their ends. Contraception, to take one obvious example, allows those who choose childlessness to enjoy the pleasures of sexual activity without the fitness-enhancing risk of conception.

Night waking evolved in environments in which there were strong fitness costs from short IBIs and in which parents lacked artificial means of birth-spacing. If night waking evolved because it prolonged IBIs, then it may no longer serve the ends for which it evolved.

Nevertheless, optimal infant development might continue to depend on frequent night feeds as part of our ingrained evolutionary heritage.

It could also be argued that when night waking is not reinforced by feeding, and infants sleep through the night, then conflict within their genomes subsides. Infants would then gain the benefit of unfragmented sleep without the pleiotropic costs of intragenomic conflict. Plausible arguments could be presented for either hypothesis and a choice between them must await discriminating evidence.”

Commenters on the 2014 study also said:

“[Crespi] The profound implications of Haig’s insights into the roles of evolutionary conflicts in fetal, infant and maternal health are matched only by the remarkable absence of understanding, appreciation or application of such evolutionary principles among the research and clinical medical communities, or the general public.

[Wilkins] A mutation may be selected for its effect on the trait that is the basis of the conflict, but that mutation also likely affects other traits. In general, we expect that these pleiotropic effects to be deleterious: conflict over one trait can actually drive other traits to be less adapted. Natural selection does not necessarily guarantee positive health outcomes.

[McNamara] Assuming that AS/REM is differentially influenced by genes of paternal origin then both REM properties and REM-associated awakenings can be better explained by mechanisms of genomic conflict than by traditional claims that REM functions as an anti-predator ‘sentinel’ for the sleeping organism.

[Hinde] Given this context of simultaneous coordination and conflict between mother and infant, distinguishing honest signals of infant need from self-interested, care-extracting signals poses a challenge.“

The persistence of epigenetic marks in Type 1 diabetes

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Epigenetics, Memory, Stress , ,

This 2016 California human study found:

“A persistency of DNA methylation over time at key genomic loci associated with diabetic complications. Two sets of DNAs collected at least 16–17 years apart from the same participants are used to show the persistency of DNA-me over time.

Twelve annotated differentially methylated loci were common in both WB [whole blood] and Monos [blood monocytes], including thioredoxin-interacting protein (TXNIP), known to be associated with hyperglycemia and related complications.

The top 38 hyperacetylated promoters in cases included 15 genes associated with the nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) inflammatory pathway, which is strongly associated with diabetic complications.”

The researchers built on a series of studies that showed how subjects with early intensive interventions didn’t develop further complications, whereas subjects with later intensive interventions:

“Continued to develop complications, such as nephropathy, retinopathy, and macrovascular diseases, at significantly higher rates.

This persistence of benefit from early application of intensive therapy, called ‘metabolic memory,’ is an enigma.”

These researchers needed to also consider a point of Enduring memories? Or continuous toxic stimulation? that:

“The lasting epigenomic effect would not be due to memory, but continuous stimulation by persistent pathogens or persistent components.”

Other studies that involved specific genes of this study include:

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/21/E3002.full “Epigenomic profiling reveals an association between persistence of DNA methylation and metabolic memory in the DCCT/EDIC type 1 diabetes cohort”

A limited study of parental transmission of anxiety/stress-reactive traits

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BehavioralTraitsThis 2016 New York rodent study found:

“Parental behavioural traits can be transmitted by non-genetic mechanisms to the offspring.

We show that four anxiety/stress-reactive traits are transmitted via independent iterative-somatic and gametic epigenetic mechanisms across multiple generations.

As the individual traits/pathways each have their own generation-dependent penetrance and gender specificity, the resulting cumulative phenotype is pleiotropic. In the context of genetic diseases, it is typically assumed that this phenomenon arises from individual differences in vulnerability to the various effects of the causative gene. However, the work presented here reveals that pleiotropy can be produced by the variable distribution and segregated transmission of behavioural traits.”

A primary focus was how anxiety was transmitted from parents to offspring:

“The iterative propagation of the male-specific anxiety-like behaviour is most compatible with a model in which proinflammatory state is propagated from H [serotonin1A receptor heterozygote] F0 to F1 [children] females and in which the proinflammatory state is acquired by F1 males from their H mothers, and then by F2 [grandchildren] males from their F1 mothers.

We propose that increased levels of gestational MIP-1β [macrophage inflammatory protein 1β] in H and F1 mothers, together with additional proinflammatory cytokines and bioactive proteins, are required to produce immune system activation in their newborn offspring, which in turn promotes the development of the anxiety-like phenotype in males.

In particular, increase in the number of monocytes and their transmigration to the brain parenchyma in F1 and F2 males could be central to the development of anxiety.”

The researchers studied transmission of behavioral traits and epigenetic changes. Due to my quick take on the study title – “Behavioural traits propagate across generations..” – I had expectations of this study that weren’t born out. What could the researchers have done versus what they did?

The study design removed prenatal and postnatal parental behavioral transmission of behavioral traits and epigenetic changes as each generation’s embryos were implanted into foster wild-type (WT) mothers.

The study design substituted the foster mothers’ prenatal and postnatal parental environments for the biological parents’ environments. So we didn’t find out, for example:

  • To what extents the overly stress-reactive F1 female children’s prenatal environments and postnatal behaviors induced behaviors and/or epigenetic changes in their children; and
  • Whether the F2 grandchildren’s parental behaviors subsequently induced behaviors and/or epigenetic changes in the F3 great-grandchildren.

How did the study meet the overall goal of rodent studies: to help humans?

    1. Only a minority of humans experienced an early-life environment that included primary caregivers other than our biological parents.
    2. Very, very few of us experienced a prenatal environment other than our biological mothers.
    3. The study’s thorough removal of parental behavior was an outstanding methodology to confirm by falsifiability whether parental behavior was both an intergenerational and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance mechanism.
    4. Maybe the researchers filled in some gaps in previous rodent studies, such as determining what is or isn’t a “true transgenerational mechanism.”

As an example of a rodent study that more closely approximated human conditions, the behavior of a mother whose DNA was epigenetically changed by stress induced the same epigenetic changes to her child’s DNA when her child was stressed per One way that mothers cause fear and emotional trauma in their infants:

“Our results provide clues to understanding transmission of specific fears across generations and its dependence upon maternal induction of pups’ stress response paired with the cue to induce amygdala-dependent learning plasticity.”

How did parental behavioral transmission of behavioral traits and epigenetic changes become a subject not worth investigating? These traits and effects can be seen everyday in real-life human interactions, and in every human’s physiology.

But when investigating human correlates with behavioral epigenetic changes of rodents in the laboratory, parental behavioral transmission of behavioral traits is often treated the way this study treated it: as a confounder.

I doubt that people who have reached some degree of honesty about their early lives and concomitant empathy for others would agree with this prioritization. The papers of Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance week show the spectrum of opportunities to advance science that were intentionally missed.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160513/ncomms11492/full/ncomms11492.html “Behavioural traits propagate across generations via segregated iterative-somatic and gametic epigenetic mechanisms”

Enduring epigenetic memories? Or continuous toxic stimulation?

gettingwell4 5+ stars Premium, Epigenetics, Immune system, Memory

This 2016 French review subject was bacterial infections that produce long-lasting host memories:

“Virulence factors modify the epigenomic landscape through targeting of host signaling cascades, or chromatin complexes directly. Additionally, some bacterial factors have intrinsic catalytic activity enabling them to directly modify chromatin.

Virus, fungi, and parasites also induce similar processes.

Epigenomic changes are not the only possible marks contributing to epigenetic memory. Every inducible change that is not rapidly reversed has the potential to maintain a lasting effect.

Most studies in this field have been performed in vitro with fully terminally differentiated cells such as epithelial cells. Since in such cell types cell fate is already established and a short lifespan often occurs in vivo, this raises the question of whether such memory would be relevant for these cells. The same can be applied to differentiated innate immune cells, which also have a short lifetime.

Looking at the response of undifferentiated cells such as stem cells appears much more appropriate to further explore the concept of innate immune memory.

figureFINAL

The lasting potential of chromatin marks depends not only on the kinetics of the epigenome, but also on the stimulus itself. For example, in contrast to LPS [lipopolysaccharide, the major constituent of the cell wall of Gram-negative bacteria], which is rapidly cleared from the organism, BCG and the anthrax toxin may persist in the host organism.

The lasting epigenomic effect would not be due to memory, but continuous stimulation by persistent pathogens or persistent components.”

The last point emphasized the principle that damaging sources should be addressed. Enduring epigenetic effects may be symptoms rather than causes when toxic conditions persist.

Therapies that attempt to reverse epigenetic changes may not be effective when these changes aren’t the only factors.

https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(16)30148-2 “A Lasting Impression: Epigenetic Memory of Bacterial Infections?”

A study of genetic imprinting and neurodevelopmental disorders

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This 2016 UK human study assessed the roles of genetic imprinting on diseases that may originate from a certain interval on chromosome 15:

“The 15q11.2-q13.3 region contains a cluster of imprinted genes, which are expressed from one parental allele only as a consequence of germline epigenetic events.

The importance of epigenetic status of duplications at this interval was further underlined by analysis of a number of families. Duplications in two unaffected mothers had a DNA-methylation pattern indicative of being paternally derived, whereas their offspring, who possessed a maternally derived duplication, suffered from psychotic illness.

We clearly implicate 15q11.2-q13.3 interstitial duplications of paternal origin in the aetiology of DD [developmental delay], but do not find them at increased rates in SZ [schizophrenia], which is significantly associated only with duplications of maternal origin.

This study refines the distinct roles of maternal and paternal duplications at 15q11.2-q13.3, underlining the critical importance of maternally active imprinted genes in the contribution to the incidence of psychotic illness.”

The researchers analyzed other studies for better estimates of paternal involvement:

“We show for the first time that paternal duplications are pathogenic. One reason why paternal duplications have been regarded as non-pathogenic in the past is their rare occurrence in patients. Here we demonstrate that they are also rare in the general population as a whole.

Paternal duplications should be less efficiently eliminated from the population by negative selection pressure, due to their lower penetrance for neurodevelopmental disorders. Secondly, some maternal duplications will change to paternal when transmitted from male carriers.

We now suggest one further explanation for their rarity: male patients with SZ and other neurodevelopmental disorders have lower fecundity. Men suffering with SZ have only half the number of offspring compared to women with SZ.”

I would have liked further discussion of the “germline epigenetic events” that apparently contribute to the studied problems. These epigenetic abnormalities may have the potential to be prevented or treated, or at least used as early biomarkers.

The reviewers instead focused on:

“This work will have tangible benefits for patients with 15q11.2-q13.3 duplications by aiding genetic counseling.”

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1005993 “Parental Origin of Interstitial Duplications at 15q11.2-q13.3 in Schizophrenia and Neurodevelopmental Disorders”

Does childhood trauma influence offspring’s birth characteristics?

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Epigenetics ,

This 2016 Swedish human study investigated the effects of one specific childhood trauma, parental death:

“Parental (G1) death during (G2) childhood predicts prematurity and lower birthweight in the offspring generation (G3). This response is dependent on G2 gender, G2 age at exposure and G3 parity, but not on G3 gender.

Offspring of women who lost their parent at the age of 0-2 or at the age of 13-17 had an increased risk for prematurity.

Offspring of men who lost a parent at ages 8-12 had an increased risk of prematurity.

For women exposed to a parent’s death at age 0-2, there was no significant deficit in their offspring’s birthweight in any parity class. For women exposed at later ages we observed a deficit in birthweight.

Among children whose fathers experienced parental loss..experiencing parental death at ages 8-12 in particular, or at ages 13-17, but not at ages 0-2 or 3-7, did predict having lighter offspring.”

The study design was unable to produce causal evidence for the putative intergenerational effects. An example of the limitations was:

“We had no information about behaviours and biological markers or genes.”

Its findings were best summarized as:

“Our study fails to refute the hypothesis that a male-line epigenetic mechanism exists which may be triggered by trauma during boys’ slow growth period.”

Still, the study had a firmer foundation than did A problematic study of oxytocin receptor gene methylation, childhood abuse, and psychiatric symptoms, which speciously produced politically-correct results from childhood trauma surveys of adults.

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/05/03/ije.dyw048.full “Does childhood trauma influence offspring’s birth characteristics?”

Why drugs aren’t ultimately therapeutic

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Beliefs, Brain development, Cerebrum, Epigenetics, Glutamate, Hippocampus, Limbic system, Neurochemicals , , ,

This 2016 Oregon review’s concept was the inadequacy of drug-based therapies, explored with the specific subject of epilepsy:

“Currently used antiepileptic drugs:

  • [aren’t] effective in over 30% of patients
  • [don’t] affect the comorbidities of epilepsy
  • [don’t] prevent the development and progression of epilepsy (epileptogenesis).

Prevention of epilepsy and its progression [requires] novel conceptual advances.”

The overall concept that current drug-based therapies poorly address evolutionary biological realities was illustrated by a pyramid, with the comment that:

“If the basis of the pyramid depicted in Figure 1 is overlooked, it becomes obvious that a traditional pharmacological top-down treatment approach has limitations.”

Why drug ultimately aren't therapeutic

I would have liked the reviewer to further address the “therapeutic reconstruction of the epigenome” point he made in the Abstract:

“New findings based on biochemical manipulation of the DNA methylome suggest that:

  1. Epigenetic mechanisms play a functional role in epileptogenesis; and
  2. Therapeutic reconstruction of the epigenome is an effective antiepileptogenic therapy.”

As it was, the reviewer lapsed into the prevalent belief that the causes of and cures for human diseases will always be found on the molecular level – for example, the base of the above pyramid – and never in human experiences. This preconception leads to discounting human elements – notably absent in the above pyramid – that generate epigenetic changes.

A consequence of ignoring experiential causes of diseases is that the potential of experiential therapies to effect “therapeutic reconstruction of the epigenome” isn’t investigated.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnmol.2016.00026/full “The Biochemistry and Epigenetics of Epilepsy: Focus on Adenosine and Glycine”

Epigenetic remodeling creates immune system memory

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Epigenetics, Immune system, Memory , ,

This 2016 German review subject was memory characteristics of immune cells:

“Innate immune memory has likely evolved as an ancient mechanism to protect against pathogens. However, dysregulated processes of immunological imprinting mediated by trained innate immunity may also be detrimental under certain conditions.

Evidence is rapidly accumulating that innate immune cells can adopt a persistent pro-inflammatory phenotype after brief exposure to a variety of stimuli, a phenomenon that has been termed ‘trained innate immunity.’ The epigenome of myeloid (progenitor) cells is presumably modified for prolonged periods of time, which, in turn, could evoke a condition of continuous immune cell over-activation.”

These reviewers focused on an example of atherosclerosis, although other examples were discussed of epigenetic remodeling to acquire immune memory:

“In the last ten years, several novel non-traditional risk factors for atherosclerosis have been identified that are all associated with activation of the immune system. These include chronic inflammatory diseases such as:

  • Rheumatoid arthritis,
  • Gout,
  • Psoriatic arthritis, and
  • Ankylosing spondylitis,

as well as infections with bacteria or viruses.”

Innate immune memory

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044532316300185 “Long-term activation of the innate immune system in atherosclerosis”

Diets were discussed, mainly regarding their various negative effects. I was interested to see a study that referenced a common dietary supplement:

“Pathway analysis of promoters that were potentiated by β-glucan identified several innate immune and signaling pathways upregulated in trained cells that are responsible for induction of trained immunity.”

Other curated research into epigenetic remodeling of immune system memory includes:

Lack of oxygen’s epigenetic effects

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This 2016 Finnish review subject was epigenetic effects of hypoxia:

“Ever since the Cambrian period, oxygen availability has been in the center of energy metabolism. Hypoxia stabilizes expression of hypoxia-inducible transcription factor-1α (HIF-1α), which controls expression of hundreds of survival genes related to enhanced energy metabolism and autophagy.

There are several other signals, mostly related to stresses, which can increase expression of HIF factors and thus improve cellular survival. However, a chronic activation of HIF factors can have detrimental effects, e.g. stimulate cellular senescence and tissue fibrosis commonly enhanced in age-related diseases.

Stabilization of HIF-1α increases expression of histone lysine demethylases (KDM). Hypoxia-inducible KDMs support locally the gene transcription induced by HIF-1α, although they can also control genome-wide chromatin landscape, especially KDMs which demethylate H3K9 and H3K27 sites (repressive epigenetic marks).”

Gene areas where HIF-1α is involved include:

  • “angiogenesis
  • autophagy
  • glucose uptake
  • glycolytic enzymes
  • immune responses
  • embryonic development
  • tumorigenesis
  • generation of miRNAs.”

HIF-1a signaling

Figure 1 above was instructive in that the reviewers pointed out the lack of a feedback mechanism in HIF-1α signaling. A natural lack of feedback to the HIF-1α signaling source contributed to diseases such as:

  • “age-related macular degeneration
  • cancer progression
  • chronic kidney disease
  • cardiomyopathies
  • adipose tissue fibrosis
  • inflammation
  • detrimental effects which are linked to epigenetic changes.”

The point was similar to a study referenced in The PRice “equation” for individually evolving: Which equation describes your life? that:

“Evolution may preferentially mitigate damage to a biological system than reduce the source of this damage.”

This review subject has many interdependencies and timings within a complex network. Contexts are important:

“Cross-talk between NF-κB [nuclear factor kappa B] and HIF-1α in inflammation might be organized in cell type and context-dependent manner.

It seems that ROS [reactive oxygen species] affect HIF-1α signaling in a context-dependent manner.

Hypoxia stimulated expression of KDM3A and KDM4B genes in different cellular contexts. Given that KDM3A and KDM4B are the major histone demethylases which remove repressive H3K9 sites, their role as transcriptional cofactors seems to be important in activation of HIF-1α signaling. Members of KDM4 subfamily have a crucial role in DNA repair systems, although responses seem to be enzyme-specific and appear in a context-dependent manner.

Acute hypoxia can stimulate cell-cycle arrest but does not provoke cellular senescence in all contexts.”

It wasn’t mentioned that hypoxia evokes cellular Adaptations to stress encourage mutations in a DNA area that causes diseases.

The review was tailored for the publishing journal Aging and Disease, and the subject was best summed up by:

“HIF-1α can control cellular fate in adult animals, either stimulating proliferation or triggering cellular senescence, by regulating the expression of different KDMs in a context-dependent manner.”

This review covered hypoxic conditions during human development that are clearly origins of many immediate and later-life diseases. However, cited remedies only addressed symptoms.

That these distant causes can no longer be addressed is a hidden assumption of research and treatment of effects of health problems. Aren’t such assumptions testable here in the current year?

http://www.aginganddisease.org/article/2016/2152-5250/ad-7-2-180.shtml “Hypoxia-Inducible Histone Lysine Demethylases: Impact on the Aging Process and Age-Related Diseases”

The inevitable effects of avoidable wars

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Epigenetics, Memory, Stress

“It was like Tom had tried to return home,” says Jacky Sweetnam. “But he didn’t quite make it.”

http://news.nationalpost.com/features/the-ghosts-of-vietnam-the-last-days-of-a-decorated-canadian-vet “The Ghosts of Vietnam”

In memoriam to my father who died twenty years ago last week. World War II ruined his life with undiagnosed PTSD, some of the effects of which affected his children.

His brother – my uncle – was a Navy hospital corpsman during the slaughter at Iwo Jima, and was even more afflicted.

Neither of them were ever treated.

Using epigenetic outliers to diagnose cancer

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Epigenetics , ,

This 2016 Chinese/UK human cancer cell study tested five algorithms and found:

“Most of the novel proposed algorithms lack the sensitivity to detect epigenetic field defects at genome-wide significance. In contrast, algorithms which recognise heterogeneous outlier DNA methylation patterns are able to identify many sites in pre-neoplastic lesions, which display progression in invasive cancer.

Many DNA methylation outliers are not technical artefacts, but define epigenetic field defects which are selected for during cancer progression.”

The usual method of epigenetic studies involves:

“Identify genomic sites where the mean level of DNAm [DNA methylation] differs as much as possible between the two phenotypes. As we have seen however, such an approach is seriously underpowered in cancer studies where tissue availability is a major obstacle.

In addition to allelic frequency, we also need to take the magnitude of the alteration into consideration. As shown here, infrequent but bigger changes in DNAm (thus defining outliers) are more likely to define cancer field defects, than more frequent yet smaller DNAm changes.”

A similar point was made in Genetic statistics don’t necessarily predict the effects of an individual’s genes:

“Epigenomic analyses are limited by averaging of population-wide dynamics and do not inform behavior of single cells.”

One of the five tested algorithms was made freely available by the researchers. The limitations on its use were discussed, and included:

“Studies conducted in a surrogate tissue such as blood are scenarios where DNAm outliers are probably not of direct biological relevance to cancer development.”

http://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12859-016-1056-z “Stochastic epigenetic outliers can define field defects in cancer”