Rick,

Thank you once again. This is a stretch, but there is a link. I was wondering how PWP who have been on steroids do. In early stages of encephalitis induced Parkinsonism, the symptoms disappear and some patients experience a complete recovery from the PD like stuff meaning that inflammatory cascade was squelched before the inflammatory process became neurodegenerative.

Several viruses have been linked with a post-infectious Parkinsonian syndrome or reaction and a few bold researchers out there are starting to murmur what you and Girija (and now I) have been saying for years: that PD is indeed, at least in part, auto immune based. In addition to viral infections, bacterial infections like H. pylori and Borrelia burgdorferi causing Lyme Disease have also been linked to Parkinson's Disease. I think several people here have noticed a positive response to antibiotics.

Well, through Epstein Barr virus which is under scrutiny still as cause of Chronic Fatigue we have a link to PD dating back 10 years ago through research and more recently through case studies of a post viral encephalitis and in case acute Parkinsonism resulting in death.

Using antibodies generated against the latent membrane protein 1 of Epstein-Barr virus, intense immunoreactivity of Lewy bodies (in PD and dementia with Lewy bodies) and glial cytoplasmic inclusions (in multiple system atrophy) was demonstrated. ELISA and Western blotting techniques confirmed that this immunolabeling was due to cross-reactivity of the antiviral antibody with alpha-synuclein, a neuronal protein implicated in the pathogenesis of PD. This example of cross-reactivity between Epstein-Barr virus and alpha-synuclein may bear implications for further elucidating infectious or autoimmune mechanisms in PD.


This is a stretch but it also links us in as having that heightened sensitivity to stress adrenal axis thing going on. I guess that I am now convinced that for many of us, PD has an infectious origin and that our difference in symptoms may indeed be a reflection of the main guilty party. Now if research efforts could just be accelerated into areas bringing together neurology with endocrinology....