http://www.uab.edu/news/latest/item/...disease-damage

This is really interesting, our immune system killing our brain cells. Even more so after yesterday's reports at ASCO by Merck and Bristol Myers. Their new ground breaking cancer drugs work by increasing the body's immune system's ability to kill cancer cells. They allow T-cells to have receptors that bind to a protein, PD-L1, on tumor cells and kills them. This may very well be the most significant finding ever in cancer research.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/shares...164822927.html

The opposite now has to been done for PD. Develop drugs that stop T-Cell receptors from binding to MHCII proteins in PWP. Of course, it may well open up the body to other infection risk, but that can be controlled.

Andrographis paniculata, a Burmese herb and immune modulator you can easily obtain, might be useful for neuroinflammation..


http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/308/3/975.long

Although it would have been nice to have seen it happen five years ago when we were coming to the same conclusions, better late than never. The Nobel Committee can send the check c/o DocJohn if they don't mind....

A couple of websites for this issue-
My own "A Matter of Balance" that attempts to make a neat and understandable package of this. I'm sure it fails but one gets what one pays for.

One that I just found last week-
http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com

The latter is the work of Art Ayers, Phd in cellular biology and well worth looking at. Very down to earth with an emphasis on diet and exercise with explanations "why".

My own raises an issue in my last post that may be important to the "new" research. Namely, -
"
Discussing the Science of Parkinson's Disease

Home
0 – Start Here
1 – Preface
2 – Introduction
3 – Contents
4 – Appendix
5 – A Possible Solution
6 – A Last Word
Critical Events/Times
External Factors
Interacting Systems
Internal Factors
Miscellany
Self-Destructive Processes

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?

Looking a little further – it is often reported that people experienced traumatic events in the couple of years prior to their first PD symptoms. How does trauma affect regulatory T cell populations and thereby the control of the immune system’s ability to halt an inflammatory response? That question led to this:

Brain Behav Immun. 2009 Nov;23(8):1117-24. Epub 2009 Jul 18.

Substantial reduction of naïve and regulatory T cells following traumatic stress.

Sommershof A, Aichinger H, Engler H, Adenauer H, Catani C, Boneberg EM, Elbert T, Groettrup M, Kolassa IT.

Division of Immunology, University...."