Hey there,

Imad, I was toying with posting a similar citation but wanted to substantiate first. However, I just want to nip the old pro vs. con or Sinemet good vs. Sinemet evil argument in the bud because we are missing the point. I think this article says volumes about what is wrong with the PD Machine (what I think of as scientists, doctors and lack of any real innovation or change in outcome for patients).

This article targets what many of us have written about here many times before? Why do we have nothing but crude form of dopamine replacement as therapy for the last 50+ years?

We do not have a dopamine deficit disorder! In fact we have 60-70% of our overall brain levels of dopamine intact!!!! We lose 80-90% from one small area of the brain- these are the striatal dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra impacting mainly our motor function.

The other dopa neurons are in the Ventral Tegmental in the middle part of our brain and control our reward center and limbic system including the amygdala. We retain those neurons. In fact these neurons are shown to be resistant to alpha-synuclein!!!This has been known five years now...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...69996106000933

The bigger picture:

Why in the world has there been so little research based on this? It may potentially answer why our striatal dopa neurons are so vulnerable to attack from alpha-synuclein aggregation thus answering one of the big mysteries of PD.

We do not lose nearly all our dopamine neurons! My God, how confusing and plain wrong; it is misinformation that needs to be corrected and stop circulating.

PD should be looked at as neuron dysregulation disorder or neurotransmitter imbalance disorder --it is about dopamine only to extent that it impacts neurotransmission and chemical balances period. NIH! Someone please address this and start changing that misperception that this is an old person's disease!! Hello, if this were the case why are only striatal dopa cells vulnerable to aging?

Do we need any more "proof" that much more research needs to be directed at alph-syn. It is just plain inexplicable that inside our brain cells are dying due to over-expression a protein and in a neighboring area we have dopa cells resistant. It doesn't take the second coming of Einstein to compare regions in autopsies of PWP. In autopsies, over all this time, no one has ever noted that many dopa cells do not die in VTA let's compare them to the one's here in the SN to note differences.

Why still funding research on completely useless studies on OCD and other behavioral pathologies in PD as some sort of mysterious entity or worse yet try to blame the patient when it is drug induced due to an excess of dopamine in our "reward" center.

These are just a few initial questions...but what we should be asking ourselves is not if l-dopa is toxic or causes problems, but why it has taken 50 years for someone to make this "discovery"? I also wonder what this means for newer treatments with neurotrophics like GDNF? Maybe this is w

Please, I am grateful for Sinemet; I think it is far too maligned. If it were delivered differently, we would not effectively overdose the other part of our brain. Ugh.

Laura