What is excitotoxicity and how is it related to calcium leve

What is excitotoxicity, and how is it related to calcium levels? What role might this play in neurodegeneration related to Huntington’s disease?

Solution

Answer:

Excitotoxicity is the process we can say that it is related to the pathology.so also called as an pathological process. This process is responsible for the killing and damaging of the nerve cells. As this killing and damaging caused due to the over stimulation of the neurotransmitters. The over stimulation of the neurotransmitter include the neurotransmitters such as glutamate.

The neurotransmitters glutamate is having the certain receptors which include the receptors such as NMDA receptors as well as AMPA receptors. These receptors are initiated excessively by the glutamatergic strome. As the result of this the excitotoxins which include NMDA and the kainic acid will start getting attached to the given receptors. So due to which there is the occurances of the high level of excitotoxicity which results in the release of the high level of calcium ions into the cells.

So as the level of the calcium ions gets increase it will result in the initiation or the activation of the large amount of the enzymes including endonucleases, phospholipases,etc.

And as these enzymes gets released and activated with the release of the high calcium level these enzyme will start damaging the nerve cells which include its structure and also will damage its component which include cells membrane, cytoskeleton and also will going to damage the DNA.

So in the case of the huntington disease the excitotoxins going to damage the cellular structure due to the vulnerability of the glutamine. which result in the neurodegeneration.