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Solving the Puzzle: Brain Disorders
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Shaking, muscle stiffness and poor balance are just a few of the symptoms that one million American Parkinson’s disease patients live with everyday. The cause continues to elude the medical community, but now researchers have identified several gene variations that could predict individuals who are at higher risk for both ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Parkinson’s disease.

The results have brought back an astonishing 2,000 times greater than the average risk for ALS and nearly 400 times greater than the average risk for Parkinson’s disease. Investigators obtained these results by analyzing genetic variations in people with ALS, Parkinson’s disease and those who did not have neurological disorders.

“The mission of our research is to predict, prevent and halt brain aging disorders,” Demetrius Maraganore, M.D., Mayo Clinic neurologist and lead author of the study, was quoted saying. “I envision a day when we will be able to do a simple blood test and predict whether a person is at high risk to develop brain aging disorders such as ALS, Parkinson’s disease and even Alzheimer’s disease by studying common gene variations in disease pathways. In persons at high risk, we may be able to prevent the disease or slow or half their progression by developing drugs that target the same disease pathways. For ALS and Parkinson’s disease, our study is a major step in these directions.”

ALS causes degeneration of the nerve cells in certain regions of the brain and spinal cord that control a person’s voluntary muscles. Mayo Clinic neurologists specializing in ALS and movement disorders agree impairments in brain wiring and repair are possible causes of ALS and Parkinson’s disease.

“Now we need to develop a better map of the gene variations within the axon guidance pathway and study and compare gene variations across multiple brain aging diseases and populations,” Timoth Lesnick, a Mayo Clinic biostatistician, was quoted saying.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

SOURCE: PLoS ONE, published online, Jan.16, 2008

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