If tryptophan-to-kynurenine metabolism does all these bad things — makes us anxious, susceptible to tumors and parasites, worse at healing from injuries— why do we have it?
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Quinolinic acid is an NMDA agonist, which means it spreads brain damage by excessively “exciting” neurotransmitter receptors, letting so many highly reactive calcium ions into the neuron that they kill it. This process has a role in virtually every neurodegenerative disease.
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Moreover, quinolinic acid makes brain tumors more resistant to oxidative stress (like radiation, chemo, or the body’s own immune defenses. ://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/canres/73/11/3225.full.pdf.)
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Viruses can induce kynurenine production; here, influenza increases TDO and IDO expression & kynurenine production in rat brains: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=TDO+virus&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DM_fb6QYy0QYJ …
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TDO, IDO, kynurenine, and quinolinic acid are found elevated in various viral infections: HIV, hepatitis B and C, herpesviruses, etc.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.4137/IJTR.S26862 …
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Why? Tryptophan depletion is itself an immune defense against some bacteria and viruses. In response to viral infection, the body produces IFN-gamma, which activates IDO and TDO, which make kynurenine. Unfortunately, kynurenine has all the nasty effects mentioned upthread.
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So if you have a *chronic* viral infection, you’re going to keep pumping out kynurenines as a side effect of trying to kill the virus, which cause immunosuppression, which makes you more susceptible to viral infection...it’s a vicious cycle!
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What kinds of drugs inhibit IDO and TDO? Well, azole antifungals (like ketoconazole) and the MAOI antifungal phenelzine (also known as Nardil, the Flame of the West) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=20&q=ido1+inhibitor&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DYbQyk8FoSIMJ …
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The antiviral acyclovir is also an IDO1 inhibitor:https://jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-2094-7-44 …
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Acyclovir inhibits TDO too:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11011-008-9095-4 …
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And so does the antibiotic minocycline:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043466617303848 …
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End of conversation
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