74535 Scientists at the University of Granada and the High Resolution Hospital in Loja (Granada) prove that asthmatic patients who suffer from xerostomia (dry mouth syndrome) have a poorer level of control disease. Whether an asthmatic patient also suffers from severe xerostomia can be of great use for the pneumologist when it comes to establishing that particular patient’s level of control disease.

Xerostomia is the subjective perception of dryness in the mouth due to malfunction of the salivary glands. It affects 50% of the population over sixty, and it can affect more than 90% of hospitalized patients. It is a frequent symptom in patients suffering from a diversity of diseases, and it affects their quality of life and mouth health.
For their part, inhaled corticosteroids (ICs) constitute the basic treatment for patients with bronchial asthma, and they are applied by means of inhaling devices through the oral cavity.
ICs in current use for asthma treatment have a very low level of bioavailability, i.e. they work at local level and pass in a very small percentage onto general circulation. This is the reason why their systemic effects are minimal. The effects of ICs at local level, in particular over oral mucosa, has so far been very little studied.
A study with 74 patients
To conduct this study, these researchers from Granada analysed a total of 57 asthma patients plus 17 healthy ones, who acted as control group. They could thus confirm that a large percentage of asthma patients also suffered from xerostomia.
«Our data indicate that treatments with high ICs doses diminish the production of salivary protein MUC5B, which has a protective function on the buccal mucosa» says Pedro José Romero Palacios, full professor at the Medicine department, University of Granada, and principal investigator in this research. Clinically this effect results in xerostomia (dry mouth), and is generally associated with a poorer control of asthma.
Under the light shed by this study, scientists concluded that there is a moderate relation between the level of asthma control and the severity of xerostomia.

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74742 A study which includes the participation of University of Granada scientists has provided new data on the Q10 coenzyme (CoQ10), a molecule which is synthesized within the cells of the organism itself and which has essential functions for cellular metabolism. This study opens the door for the development, in the not too distant future, of tools to modulate the synthesis of CoQ10 in human cells according to metabolic needs. This is particularly important for the treatment of diseases caused by primary and secondary deficiencies in CoQ10.

Its role in the production of energy required by the cell and its antioxidant capacity are among the best known functions of this coenzyme. Human cases have been described in which the deficiency in CoQ10 can be attributed to defects in the biosynthetic pathway, which causes a syndrome with a very heterogeneous clinical picture.
CoQ10 deficiency is a rare mitochondrial disease which affects mostly children. The details of this biosynthetic pathway are not known in their totality, since there are steps whose catalysing enzymes remain unknown, or proteins in the pathway whose specific function is either unknown or has not yet been fully demonstrated.
One of those proteins is Coq9, which the UGR research group demonstrated in 2013 is an essential protein in the biosynthesis of CoQ, and which specifically regulates the Coq7 protein, an enzyme with a hydroxylase activity that catalyses one of the intermediate steps for the synthesis of CoQ10.
This study is now led by Dr. David J. Pagliarini (U. of Wisconsin-Madison) in collaboration with Dr Liang Tong’s team (Columbia U.) and the U. of Granada researchers Marta Luna Sánchez and Luis Carlos López García. It has been recently published in the journal PNAS. This research conclusively proves that protein CoQ9 regulates enzyme CoQ7.
Through the crystallization of the human protein and experiments conducted on mice, the study proves that Coq9 has a lipid-binding structure, which would give it the capacity to provide enzyme Coq7 with the intermediary metabolite that it uses as a substrate in the reaction it catalyses. The results of the study suggest, besides, that the biosynthetic machinery of CoQ10 is organized as a multiprotein complex in mammals, with the purpose of increasing the efficiency of its synthesis and enable its regulation.

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