More on mitochondria in PD and exercise

it is a 2010 report

Mito and PD
Harvard Univ Press release: A new (2010) finding from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), researchers identify a link between Parkinson’s disease onset and dysfunctional activity of energy genes in the brain and identify a potential therapeutic target — the PGC-1alpha gene — to reverse this energy gene failure. This research is published in the Oct. 6 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
“We found a clear-cut deficit in expression of genes that control the energy production in cell in patients with Parkinson’s,” said Clemens Scherzer, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, principal investigator of the Laboratory for Neurogenomics at BWH, and author of the study. “One key set of genes dysfunctional in the brains of Parkinson’s patients is controlled by the master switch PGC-1alpha. PGC-1alpha activates mitochondrial genes, including many of those needed to maintain and repair the power plants in the mitochondria. Reduced expression of the genes that PGC-1alpha regulates likely occurs during the initial stages of Parkinson’s disease, perhaps even before the onset of symptoms.”
From WIKI:
Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC-1alpha) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the PPARGC1A gene.[1]
PGC-1alpha is a transcriptional coactivator that regulates the genes involved in energy metabolism. This protein provides a direct link between external physiological stimuli and the regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis, and is a major factor that regulates muscle fiber type determination. Endurance exercise has been shown to activate the PGC-1alpha gene in human skeletal muscle
Clinical significance
Recently PPARGC1A has been implicated as a potential therapy for Parkinson's Disease conferring protective effects on mitochondrial metabolism.
A recent study in McMaster University in Ontario, Canada found that massage therapy seemed to increase the amount of PGC-1alpha which leads to the production of new mitochondria

..PGC-1 inhibits proinflammatory cytokine producTION