Spicing Up Mouse Muscles: Potential Therapy for Muscular Dystrophy

Preparing meat with turmeric occurs in kitchens daily but using spices to treat muscle disease is not a common occurrence. New research from Nanjing University in China shows curcumin, the compound in turmeric responsible for its yellow hue, alleviates a mouse version of muscular dystrophy (mdx) when injected.

Duchenne's muscular dystrophy is a muscle wasting disease that results in severe disability and ultimately, death. What is striking about the article published in Molecules and Cells is that the pathology of the muscle fibers is largely prevented.

In my research with potassium channels, I spent some time viewing plump dystrophic mouse muscles under the microscope. Normal muscle slices easily, folding onto the slide; cross sections show uniform fibers nicely packed with nuclei in the cell's corners. Muscles from mdx mice, conversely, fragment and shred during the cutting process. The muscle integrity is drastically compromised and that's noticeable even when you get a nice sample laying flat on the slide. Debris is packed between the misshapen fibers and the nuclei no longer associate with the edge of the cell but are now centralized.

The figures in this study are impressive because the muscle fibers appear healthier and the mice regain strength. The mouse data looks similar to mdx mouse muscles treated with corticosteroids -the current standard therapy for people with the disease. These medications slow the disease but have significant negative side effects.

Muscular dystrophy results from a deficiency in one protein, dystrophin. This protein, viewed as a pivotal component of a protein network, links a multitude of other proteins providing a physical framework for the cell. But what the study authors think curcumin is doing, has nothing to do with this protein assemblage.

Curcumin is well known to interrupt another protein, NF-kappa B, involved with regulating inflammation and stress. The authors hypothesize that the damaging affects of excessive NF-kappa B activity is reduced by curcumin.

Treating muscular dystrophy with curcumin is not a new idea. Another group, fed mice curcumin in hopes of lessening symptoms. But no effects were observed. The technique of injecting the compound seems to be the key probably because more curcumin reaches the blood stream and becomes available.

Is injecting curcumin a possible treatment for human patients? Could it replace current steroid treatments -or be used with them to treat the disease even more effectively. The doses of curcumin discussed are likely nontoxic.

Lead investigator of the study, Dr. Min-Sheng Zhu, Professor at Nanjing University in China, stated, “A daily injection is indeed difficult to be accepted for long-term therapy, but I think this difficulty will be overcome in the future if curcumin is effective in human as we expect. Actually, we have been making efforts to solve this problem. We don’t know whether curcumin can be used with corticosteroid treatment. Considering the side-effects, I think it should be OK.”

But what do practicing clinicians think about this savory idea of spicing up muscles? I attempted to find out by sending email to a reputable muscular dystrophy specialist. Unfortunately, I did not receive a response. So I'm calling on you, my reader to help out. If you work in the realm of clinical treatment, know someone that does or have personal experience on the topic, the readers here and I would love to learn more.

The image above, taken from Figure 2 of Pan et al. shows normal mouse muscle (C57BL/10), control mdx mouse muscle, and mdx muscle treated with curcumin.

Pan, Y., Chen, C., Shen, Y., Zhu, CH., Wang, G., Wang, XC., Chen, HQ., Zhu, MS. (2008). Curcumin Alleviates Dystrophic Muscle Pathology in mdx Mice. Molecules and Cells, 25(4)