Why Are We Thirsty?

Shirley Carey

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• Publié par: wyzandrea
• Publié le: 09 janvier 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• Langue: English

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Why Are We Thirsty?

Tags: dehydration, protein, TRPV1

Recently, scientists at the the Mcgill University's Center for health research (RI-MUHC) and Duke University have made a breakthrough progress that can help us understand how our brain perceives and prevents dehydration. They determine the structure of a key protein in the brain, which is involved in the hydration of the body, and can control the temperature. The findings, published on October 6th on Cell Reports, may have important clinical implications because the protein may be a target for the development of a number of body fluid imbalance-relateddisease modelhealth problems (common to the emergency room) for treatment and diagnosis.

"We have determined that this is a protein that allows the brain to monitor the physiological temperature, which is very important, because it helps the brain to detect heat and trigger adaptive responses, such as thirst," the study group said. “This protein, which is an ion channel, can regulate ions going through the cell membrane and is thought to play a vital role in the balance of body fluid (water, blood, etc.) and sodium (salt) levels, and the changes in its regulation may be related to salt-related hypertension, and cause body fluid retention, heart failure, sepsis or brain trauma."

The change of osmotic adjustment can have a great influence on human health. In fact, sodium is necessary to regulate the water content of the human body, and therefore, high salt levels may damage the kidneys and increase blood pressure.

Body fluid balance is the most common cause of hospitalization in the emergency room. For example, hyponatremia—a disease when the sodium in the blood is in a low level. Sodium is an electrolyte that helps regulate the amount of water in our cells. When this happens, the body's water level rises and the brain cells begin to swell, causing nausea, vomiting and headache. It is well known that this is a very common problem in the elderly, which can lead toADME services of the body, cognitive changes and even seizures.

The researchers said,"Now, we have found the structure of the protein, and we can understand the relationship between this ion channel and certain diseases, such as hyponatremia. This will provide us with a tool to modify the mechanism to prevent or treat the disease."

In 2006, a gene, known as TRPV1, played an important role in the detection of the balance of fluid changes. Two years later, the researchers found that the same gene was also involved in the detection of body temperature. However, the type of protein produced by the TRPV1 gene remains unknown.

Interestingly, the ion channel is an alternative to the TRPV1 gene, which is typically to detect encoding's capsaicin receptor withgene knockdown methods.