http://www.itv.com/news/story/2013-0...diabetes-drug/

There are some posts here about Byetta and PD... already.

Seems kind of risky to me... with the pancreatitis risk.
Patients with diabetes have rather become scarce... besides due to the side effect profile.

But it is interesting since it involve glucose control.

See also:
"Parkinson's disease, insulin resistance and novel agents of neuroprotection."
Aviles-Olmos I, Limousin P, Lees A, Foltynie T.
Brain. 2013 Feb;136(Pt 2):374-84. doi: 10.1093/brain/aws009. Epub 2012 Feb 17.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22344583

"Multiple avenues of research including epidemiology, molecular genetics and cell biology have identified links between Parkinson's disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Several recent discoveries have highlighted common cellular pathways that potentially relate neurodegenerative processes with abnormal mitochondrial function and abnormal glucose metabolism. This includes converging evidence identifying that peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-α, a key regulator of enzymes involved in mitochondrial respiration and insulin resistance, is potentially pivotal in the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease. This evidence supports further study of these pathways, most importantly to identify neuroprotective agents for Parkinson's disease, and/or establish more effective prevention or treatment for type 2 diabetes mellitus. In parallel with these advances, there are already randomized trials evaluating several established treatments for insulin resistance (pioglitazone and exenatide) as possible disease modifying drugs in Parkinson's disease ..."

Perhaps we should spend more time discussing the relationship between PD progression and diet.

John

This is interesting Gerry. There is another current PD study ongoing with Pioglitazone (another type 2 diabetes drug). I was originally participating in the study but dropped out after meeting with the research team. The potential side effects concerned me and I wasn't convinced on the risk vs reward.

This side effect has been known about for a long time:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...ghlight=byetta

Are getting quite excited about this, see below for the Parkinson's UK web site.

http://www.parkinsons.org.uk/about_u...l_results.aspx

Do we share the excitement or not ?

Neil.

The trial had the support of patient-led org Cure Parkinson Trust, and they seem optimistic that in a few years this could possibly become a useful drug. The reports I read include statements from an actual participant who said it had improved things. So, like much in this field, perhaps.

In the meantime John's question about PD and diet also stands. It is a subject that has been discussed in this forum many times.

http://www.cureparkinsons.org.uk/News/exenatide

Posting for your information...
This was on one of our news channels in Australia last night.
Video shows short footage of one patient from the trial - Arthur Lindley.


http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/natio...sons-progress/
Drug slows Parkinson's progress

I was surprised that only 20 people received the drug in the actual trial.

http://www.uclh.org/News/Pages/Diabe...spatients.aspx

And for a lot of reasons ranging from horny gila monsters under a desert sky to new territory with the promise of great riches to come. I watched it with great interest before it disappeared into the Clinic and am glad to see it return. I checked with File Mountain (aka my hard disk) and found that there was indeed a lot to the buzz. I will just touch on it here and will bring out more as time goes on if there is interest.

One thing is that, as noted above, the work is being pushed by the Cure Parkinson's Trust and its honcho Tom Isaacs who is sort of England's MJ Fox. Tom found out that he was thought to have PD and immediately went on the offensive with a scheme to walk around the coast of Britain to raise research funds. He accomplished it very well and set up a foundation which he directs. Totally patient controlled and dedicated to getting results not tenure.

There is also the fact that they have chosen to focus on an existing and approved drug. I see this as vitally important in that the time between something major being described and we PDers standing at our local pharmacy with a Script in hand drops from a few decades to a few weeks! My GP has already agreed that if things start looking even more positive that he will be happy to write the order for me.

I am going to try to pull together a summary of why and what. As I remember, there is a peptide produced when you eat. That peptide streams out into the system and begins to act as a stimulant for neurogenesis and as a neurtropic guide. But the peptide is destroyed almost immediately by an enzyme. When they were able to accomplish all those blocking actions in a mouse they found that they had some very happy little rodents with no PD to be seen. Thus the interest and the excitement. -Rick