on the thread started by Paula containing really perceptive email comments from Greg Wasson. The subject is the lousy design of clinical trials on PD treatments, especially the poor choices of endpoints.

Drs. Safer and Kaufmann in this Neurology Today article are positing that at least three disorders, Pure Autonomic Failure, Parkinson's Disease and Dementia with Lewy Bodies, each with distinct clinical features, are different manifestations of the same disease entity, Synucleopathy, and each one is distinct only in the anatomic location of the neurons where the formation of the alpha synuclein-containing Lewy bodies occurs.

Research should concentrate on what those neurons have in common that result in the overproduction and/or aggregation of alpha synuclein protein. I'm convinced that's where the key to this puzzle is to be found.

Robert

p.s. when i tried to go back to the link a second time, i got a server error message that told me to insert "b." in front of "tinyurl" in the browser URL address box, then click on "Go" to bring up the journal. it worked.