Research Holds Out Hope for Preventing Parkinson's Disease

By Regina Sass
http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...reventing.html

The latest news from the Saint Louis University School of Medicine holds out a good deal of hope for sufferers of Alzheimer's disease. They are reporting that they have found the key chemical in the brain that is the cause of the disease and if things work out the way they hope they will, there will be new and better therapies in the not too distant future.

A patient with Parkinson's loses dopamine, which is a hormone in the brain that acts like a neurotransmitter. Right now, they treat Parkinson's by replacing the lost dopamine. But they feel that the new treatment that will hopefully be the result of this research, will be able to stop the cells that produce the dopamine from dying off and as a result there will be no loss of dopamine.

Parkinson's is not diagnosed until there has been about 80% of the cells that produce the dopamine that have either become damaged or die off altogether.

There is a protein named alpha-synuclein has been known for along time, to play a part in the development of Parkinson's. It is found in all regions of the brain, but in people with Parkinson's it clumps together and this is the process that causes the cells that are responsible for the production of the dopamine to die off.

In this study, the researchers found out that the dopamine can also cause the death of the cells that produce it.

When the long process that eventually ends in the development of Parkinson's first begins, dopamine is transformed into DOPAL, which is an extremely toxic substance. The researchers found out that the DOPAl is what causes alpha-synuclein to clump up, and that causes the cells to die. This is the first time that anyone has discovered this process and they hope to be able to find a way to prevent the dopamine from turning into the DOPAL and removing the risk of the cells dying.

The lead researcher on the project is William J. Burke, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurology at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine

Funding for the research came from the Missouri ADRDA Program, the Nestle Foundation, the St. Louis Veterans Administration Medical Center, the National Institutes of Health, the American Federation on Aging Research, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Charitable Trust and the Blue Gator Foundation.