Natural and Synthetic Neurotoxins in Our Environment: From Alzheimer's Disease (AD) to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Aileen I Pogue,Walter J Lukiw

doi:10.4172/2161-0460.1000249

Abstract

Humankind has inadvertently designed a remarkably precarious combination of rapidly increasing and unchecked population growth with an increased liberation of novel and potentially pathogenic chemical compounds and neurotoxins into the biosphere. Parallel increases in the deleterious consequences of unrestricted population growth and diseasecausing toxic exposures in our environment are on the horizon. Globally this poses very significant socioeconomic and healthcare concerns that have been neglected for far too long. The perception of ‘human biochemical individuality’ indicates that certain individuals or human populations with specific genetic backgrounds may be predisposed to these toxic actions through either an acute or a more chronic type of life-long environmental exposure [11,33–36]. To cite one important example, since there is abundant evidence that neurotoxic compounds such as aluminum may play initiator or disease-propagating roles for AD, ASD and other progressive, age-related neurological diseases, then we should expect these kinds of exposure situations that can adversely affect human health and welfare to become even more common and widespread in the foreseeable future [7–27]. This may be particularly important socioeconomically and epidemiologically due in part to the excessive and additional burden it will place on our already strained healthcare system both here in the United States and in global situations where even basic healthcare systems remain underdeveloped or are simply unavailable to the local human population.

Highlights

If we assume that ~ 23,000 human genes are available to be expressed in each cell, and that each gene is responsible for at least one genetic function, with a global human population of 7.4 billion it becomes very difficult to assign a single ‘standardized human gene expression profile’ that is representative for the phenotype of the human species [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]
The important take-home message here is that there are multiple, highly individualized responses in humans to the very same drug compound which in most instances are fairly well tolerated by the patient, but in other instances are highly refractory to the patient’s homeostatic physiology and especially their innate-immune and inflammatory status which may culminate in hospitalization. These findings may help explain an individual’s adverse, and sometimes extremely negative reaction to, for example, the aluminum used in OTC medications or in vaccines administered with an aluminum adjuvant
Aluminum neurotoxicity can be thought of in a similar fashion – that some individuals can adequately tolerate aluminum exposure, either chronic or acute, while others cannot. Neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be the result of the poorly understood parameters that contribute to human biochemical individuality

Summary

The Continuing Mobilization of New Chemicals and Neurotoxins into the Biosphere

Each year in the US alone there are about 630,000 new patent applications (2015; http:// www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm), many of which are for novel chemical compounds useful to the chemical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, materials, mining, energy and biotechnology industrial sectors [1]. Especially in recent years: (i) the vast majority of these new chemical compounds have not been individually tested for their neurotoxic or genotoxic properties; (ii) their detrimental effects toward human health and welfare when combinations of them are used are unknown; and (iii) their novel biological effects when they are utilized for various purposes against the vast background of already existing chemicals has not been determined It is a major scientific effort for environmental and/or neurotoxicological researchers to understand in detail how just one of these new compounds affects human health, let alone the often highly interactive toxic contributions from several hundred thousand. Aluminum’s widespread mobilization into our biosphere may place all of humankind at a heightened inflammatory status thereby increasing general risk for the development of AD, ASD and other progressive neurodegenerative disorders with an inflammatory component [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]

Human Biochemical Individuality

The Outlook for the Future

Findings

Summary