This explains a lot: Particulate matter is shown to reduce sulfatides in brain tissue.

[NNadir]

I know this is obscure, but I came across this paper this evening about the effect of particulate matter on a class of compounds known as "sulfatides" which in biochemical terms are sulfated glycosylated ceramides. It's this one: Mass Spectrometry Imaging Revealed Sulfatides Depletion in Brain Tissues of Rats Exposed in Real Air with High Fine Particulate Matter Xin Diao, Chengyi Xie, Guangshan Xie, Yuanyuan Song, Yanshan Liang, Ruijin Li, Chuan Dong, Lin Zhu, Jianing Wang, and Zongwei Cai Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2022 9 (10), 856-862

From wikipedia, here is a representative structure.



Among the primary roles these molecules are the roles in neurological tissue, particularly in the integrity of the myelin sheath in brain tissue.

It appears that exposure to particulates, one of the many dangerous pollutants - but certainly not the only dangerous pollutant in fossil fuel waste - reduces the biosynthesis of these important biomolecules.

From the introductory text of the brief paper:

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is prevalent in air pollution and poses a human health risk. In 2019, 99% of the population was living in areas where air pollution exceeded the recommended limit of the World Health Organization. (1) PM2.5 exposure was reported to be associated with increased risks of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, (2,3) mainly via elevated oxidative stress and inflammation. (4) In addition, ambient PM2.5 exposure might have an adverse impact on the central nervous system (CNS) and increase the incidences of neurodegenerative pathogenesis. (5,6) However, how PM2.5 affects the CNS and even brain function, directly or indirectly, remains unknown. Olfactory bulb inflammation was observed after exposure to severe air pollution. (7) Magnetite nanoparticles originated from air pollution were detected in the human brain. (8) Both epidemiological and experimental data indicate that the impact of PM2.5 exposure on CNS should be noted and needs to be urgently investigated. (9,10)

Lipids are extremely diverse molecules and generally constituted of hydrophobic fatty acyl chains and hydrophilic headgroups. Self-assembly of lipids forms the membrane bilayer which provides an essential physiological environment for cell survival. Lipids not only serve as structural barriers but also participate in many biological processes. Specific fatty acyl chains released from enzymatic hydrolysis of lipids can be further transformed into signal molecules and participate in various cellular activities. (11) Therefore, detection and identification of lipids are crucial for pathological studies. Ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled high-resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS) was routinely used for lipidomic profiling and quantitation in a high-throughput manner. (12,13) However, spatial information on lipids was lost during sample preparation. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI) is a powerful tool to quantitatively explore spatial information on molecules within biological samples in a label-free and high-throughput manner. (14,15) Knowledge of the spatial distribution of lipids upon external stimulus and during disease progress would be of crucial importance to understand the molecular mechanism of pathogenesis. (10,16,17) Despite various researches having addressed the impacts of PM2.5 exposure on CNS, (18,19) the spatial change of lipids in the brain after real ambient PM2.5 exposure is still lacking.

In this study, we demonstrated the effects of real ambient PM exposure on lipids distribution in rat brains by applying cutting-edge MSI approaches. The whole-body real ambient exposure was performed during the winter season in Linfen, China, where severe air pollution was caused by coal burning, particularly during winter. (20) The obtained results showed that exposure to air with high PM2.5 decreased sulfatides in the white matter of rat brains, especially in the corpus callosum and brain stem. Combining with gene expression data as well as emerging evidence from other reports, we speculate that PM2.5 exposure was potentially associated with neural damage via neuroinflammation...

I won't spend a lot of time on this paper, but here is the conclusion:

In conclusion, for the first time, a spatial-specific downregulation of sulfatides was found to be associated with real ambient PM exposure in the corpus callosum and brain stem of SD rats by MSI. Neuroinflammation markers were found to be upregulated in the corpus callosum. Given the emerging association between neurodegeneration diseases and PM2.5 exposure, (9,10,36) our data further suggested a possible association of PM exposure with neurological damage via sulfatides reduction and associated neuroinflammation in the corpus callosum regions of PM-exposed rat brains.

Neuroinflammation is posited as one possible cause of at least one form - we are beginning to posit that it's not really a single disease but rather a family of diseases - of Alzheimer's disease; we are supporting a company working on this hypothesis.

More and more I suspect that the rise of international stupidity, everything from Trump to other fascists around the world, the insane dissociation from reality, may have profound roots in our environment.

[JoeOtterbein]

1. K n R ! Thanks for posting! nt

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Breathe particles into your lungs, lose lipids in your brain.

It is gonna take some time to work out the mechanism of that, but this looks like a start.