How can the med establishment continue to ignore that stress and immune function have anything to with the cause of PD?

Much recent research is starting to implicate brain inflammation with
depression and stress. In fact, Serotonin dysregulation or neurotransmitter imbalance has never been established scientifically to cause depression, yet there is an entire class of medicine dedicated to treating neurotransmitter imbalances with Serotonin leading the pack.

From the blog post of an Evolutionary Psychiatrist:

source: http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogsp...-cause-or.html

Here is evidence that stress causes the inflammation that causes the depression, not the other way around. And yet... stress hormones and pro-inflammatory cytokines antagonize serotonin, tryptophan, and antidepressant drugs, and vice-versa.

Mere exposure to psychological stress can cause elevations in pro-inflammatory cytokines.

SSRIs in particular:

- work on the SERT (serotonin transporter). Certain immune cells have SERT and they use it to take up serotonin from mature T cells... SSRIs at least could reduce pro-inflammatory cytokine expression (many of the pro-inflammatory cytokines are released from certain types of T cells).

- standard antidepressant medications (of most of the major classes) have been shown to be anti-inflammatory in vivo and in vitro.

-seem to increase plasma and brain tryptophan concentrations, and secondarily increased production of serotonin in the brain. Tryptophan and serotonin are also known immune regulators.



It is known that we suffer from depression and anxiety in large numbers and now researchers are finding that auto-immune induced inflammation is the cause of depression, not a serotonin imbalance. Will we ever make it to that point in PD research? Evidence shows that Dopamine loss is the end result of unchecked auto-immune mediated inflammation in the brain, yet all the focus is on the late stage of this with dopa replacement. Shouldn't more time be spent exploring how depression, anxiety, and PD are starting to look like a spectrum of unchecked response to chronic stress? After all, PD presents as a mental health issue long before it becomes a movement disorder.

This leaves a lot of intriguing questions like why SSRIs are reported to induce PD in some or exacerbate existing PD? How can it be that research now shows some SSRis are neuroprotective?

Why is it that treatment with a tricyclic antidepressant delays the need for newly diagnosed patients to start anti-PD meds?


Some Antidepressants Delay Need for Dopaminergic Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease
Given the prevalence of neuros who readily prescribe SSRIs for PD, isn't it time for researchers to start looking at what links all this together? At the very least, putting near everyone on Azilect becomes even more questionable a practice.