Early parkinson's detection, 1995

In article <3ns1ch$qgi at xmission.xmission.com>, lee writes:

>"I have some questions about Parkinson's disease, both for personal and
>family reasons. Apparently, for many years before a patient manifests
>clinically-detectable symptoms, there are frequently complaints (general
>loss of fine-motor coordination, non-specific chest pains, etc.) which go undiagnosed and continue to worsen until the clinical symptoms (e.g.
>shaking) appear. Is there any reason to believe that a patient with
>preclinical complaints might respond favorably to L-Dopa, as a
>nonexpensive and early probe for dopaminergic dysfunction?"
>
>"Any thoughts are appreciated."
>
>Lee
>
"Be very careful about taking L-DOPA without close medical supervision. It
is not an innocuous drug and an overdose would be both unpleasant and
dangerous, with multiple systemic and central effects. One possible test
for early niagrostriatal loss is to see if the person has an intolerance
for nicotine. This has not, to my knowledge, been tested rigorously but
here is the basis for the suggestion. One interesting result that came out
of several epidemiological surveys in the 1980's is a strong negative
correlation between smoking (tobacco) and Parkinson's disease. People who
have Parkinson's disease don't smoke and usually have a history of not
smoking for some years before the onset of the disease. This should not be
interpreted to mean that smoking causes Parkinson's disease. Rather, this
surprising negative correlation may reflect the fact that the cholinergic
neurotransmitter system plays a major role in compensating for subclinical
lesions of the niagrostriatal system. Any disruption of the cholinergic
system by nicotine may result in under- or overcompensation and this may
explain why people with Parkinson's disease don't tend to smoke. Of
course, people may have nicotine intolerance for many other reasons and so
the results may not necessarily indicate early preclinical Parkinson's
disease."