Mitochondrial organization and structure are compromised in fibroblasts from patients with Huntington’s disease

ABSTRACT

Huntington´s disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease with onset in adulthood that leads to a complete disability and death in approximately 20 years after onset of symptoms. HD is caused by an expansion of a CAG triplet in the gene for huntingtin. Although the disease causes most damage to striatal neurons, other parts of the nervous system and many peripheral tissues are also markedly affected. Besides huntingtin malfunction, mitochondrial impairment has been previously described as an important player in HD. This study focuses on mitochondrial structure and function in cultivated skin fibroblasts from 10 HD patients to demonstrate mitochondrial impairment in extra-neuronal tissue. Mitochondrial structure, mitochondrial fission, and cristae organization were significantly disrupted and signs of elevated apoptosis were found. In accordance with structural changes, we also found indicators of functional alteration of mitochondria. Mitochondrial disturbances presented in fibroblasts from HD patients confirm that the energy metabolism damage in HD is not localized only to the central nervous system, but also may play role in the pathogenesis of HD in peripheral tissues. Skin fibroblasts can thus serve as a suitable cellular model to make insight into HD pathobiochemical processes and for the identification of possible targets for new therapies.

KEYWORDS:

• Huntington’s disease
• fibroblasts
• oxidative phosphorylation system
• mitochondrial dysfunction
• mitochondrial network
• ultrastructure

Authors contributions

Acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data MV, HS, MK, JK, TD; drafting the manuscript MV, HH; drafting figures MV, HS, others – recruitment of patients, collection of biological material JK, IR, JR; revising the manuscript JZ, HH

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr. Vaclav Capek for the statistical analysis of the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01913123.2022.2100951

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by research grants from the Ministry of education, youth and sports (COST LD15099), the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic (MZ CR AZV-NU20-04-00136 and RVO VFN 64165/2012), and institutional support of Charles University (SVV260516)