Could MCAS have a role in the development of other ailments?
Could MCAS have a role in the development of Parkinson's disease after years of migraines, IBS, and allergic asthma?
Well, we do know, and this is in some articles, you just Google it, mast cells do lead to neurodegenerative conditions. I think that's the best answer I could give to you.
Look at Parkinson's and the mast cells, and you can see that article. It looks at MS and as one additional disease that can relate to the activation of chemicals from the mast cells.
I'll take that one step further and say that I saw one of the questions that came in, it's related to this in a way, mast cells can interact with different cells in the nervous system.
There's another microglia cell, astrocytes, these have various jobs in the central nervous system in the brain, and that interaction between the mast cells and these other cells, those cells can produce mediators, mast cells can produce mediators, and if there's some signal that sort of keeps this process going, you can see how you get inflammation and then eventually probably neurodegeneration.
The other thing that I'll say is that, in the patients that I've seen who have MCAS, who develop Parkinson's, all of them actually, I won't even say some, this is my patient population, okay, so 100% of those patients have an underlying infectious disease process and/ or a toxic exposure, such as mold, that has allowed the mast cells to continuously be activated in a state that then leads down to that path.
I don't think Mast Cell Activation Syndrome itself is necessarily enough to cause that condition or other neurodegenerative diseases. There has to be something that is continuously causing that continued activation of the mast cell.