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Discussing the Science of Parkinson's Disease

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1 – Preface
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5 – A Possible Solution
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Critical Events/Times
External Factors
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Parkinson’s Disease, Stress, and Inflammation
May 13, 2011

A report in this morning’s Science Daily News started a cascade of its own as several pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. With the charming title of

“Seeing Family for the Holidays? Scientists Discover How the Stress Might Kill You”

It goes on to state “”…. researchers from the University of Connecticut Health Center have found that the same part of our nervous system that is responsible for the fight-or-flight response (called the sympathetic nervous system) also controls regulatory T cells, which are used by the body to end an immune response once a foreign invader has been removed or destroyed.”

So, here is a link between the endocrine system’s fight or flight response and the immune system’s method of ending an immune response (which fails in the case of PD) with the nervous system’s sympathetic division being responsible for both. Is it possible that events impacting the endocrine stress system could act upon the sympathetic nervous system in such a way as to impinge upon its ability to end an immune response that is no longer needed,,,,


,,,MID: 19619638 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

So here we have T cells, essential for communication of stand down orders within the immune system, suffering a 50% reduction in population due to trauma. If the unfortunate individual was one with an unusual sensitivity to bacterial toxin LPS due to early life events and was barely able to control the microglia anyway, what does a loss of half his communication ability do?

And what does this say about the rather large sub-group of PWP who report unusually traumatic childhoods? If they had also experienced LPS hypersensitivity, would they not have a similar problem?

Stress (trauma) reduces the ability of the sympathetic nervous system to regulate immune response which, in turn, allows the runaway microglial activation that ultimately damages the substantia nigra and reduces motor symptoms.

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I posted the above just over a year ago to my blog, "A Matter of Balance" shortly before my life went all to hell and damn near killed me. In the process I learned a lot - far too much to cover here in any detail so, if you are interested visit AMOB and return here for discussion.