Here are the links:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...97018610003591
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...97018601001206

And so this may be where a fecal transplant fits in...so you can get the healthy gut bacteria from non-PD donors. I have not read of where one can get this particular bacteria OTC, it is not in any yogurt or probiotic I have seen, so it would need to come from another person probably.

There is at least one company in the northeast (I want to say Boston area) that collects stool from healthy donors and screens it for transplant (people may actually be getting paid to donate, what a concept!)

I've contacted the Vietnamese American Medical Research Foundation and was told that one of the authors of the article cited above has passed away. The receptionist was not able to answer either of my two questions (she kept thinking I was with an insurance company!) and told me that IF the other author had time, she would call me back. I think it would have helped if I spoke the language.

I'll let everyone know if they contact me and/or answer my questions, but I'm not holding my breath I think if anyone can physically go there, as Sim00 mentioned it was relatively close, more may be learned.

I came across old trials of thiamine for Alzheimer's Disease (1.) J. of Geriatric Psychiatry an Neurology Vol. 6: 222 (1993)) and (2.) Arch Neurol vol. 48:81 (1991)). Although the results did not show much improvement, the large doses used were well tolerated with no noted adverse effects.

The subjects were given oral thiamine-HCl 500 mg tablets up to 8 grams daily for over 1 yr.....that's 16 tablets a day; an equal number of tablets taken 3 to 4 times a day. I thought this may be a bit overkill, since the body can absorb only so much. But a more recent study of pharmacokinetics of high dose oral thiamine-HCl (BMC Clin Pharm 12:4 (2012) demonstrated that absorption is not saturable up to 1500mg (they did not go any higher).

So I thought I would try 1500 mg thiamine-HCl orally daily and see what happens.

Parkinson's Patients Perform Better When They Think They're Taking Expensive Drugs (They're Not)

Twelve patients with Parkinson’s disease received two shots of the same drug treatment, where the second shot was given after the first wore off. Patients were told the shots were similar in effectiveness but not cost: one shot cost $100 per dose, while the other cost $1,500. In reality, each shot was a saline solution.

The purpose of this was to see if a patient’s perception of the cost of the drug would affect their placebo response. This response, otherwise known as the placebo effect, is often used to measure and observe health improvements not attributable to medication.

Before and after receiving their shots, patients completed tests measuring their motor skills, as well as brain scans. Researchers found patient’s motor skills improved by 28 percent when they thought they received a more expensive drug first compared to when first being administered the “cheap” drug. For one test in particular, patient’s scored seven points higher in comparison to only three points when thinking they received the expensive drug before the cheaper one.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/parkinso...e-drugs-319844

Found a paper describing pharmacokinetics of oral vs intravenous thiamine-HCl (Eur J Clin Pharmacol (1985) 28:213-219).

FYI
Seems 100 mg i.v. is roughly equivalent to 3000 mg oral thiamine-HCl.

the placebo affect is often brought up as the possible reason why all of the phase1/non-placebo gene therapy/implant trials for pd were successful and their phase2/placebo controlled trials failed. first of all, you are recruiting patients that are more motivated/"gung ho" than your average patient so might produce more dopamine when "excited" than the avg pd'er.

you'd think if there was a problem absorbing thiamine there would be all sorts of other symptoms which would alert a doctor to the deficiency. if B1 deficiency causes pd you'd assume you would see pd more prevelent in the 3rd world or people in poverty and in those populations young people as well as old? just playing devils advocate.

http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed...in-b1-thiamine
what i have to wonder is why no follow up research?

http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed...in-b1-thiamine

One would think, yet I think doctors miss many nutritional deficiencies because it is just too simple an explanation. We live in one of most developed nations in the world, so why would a basic vitamin and mineral screen be necessary? Then when a test is run and levels come back in normal range, we are sent home. There once was a time where doctors gave patient presenting symptoms nearly equal weight with blood panels. Now everything comes down to a "norm" that may not be normal for the individual; we are diagnosed or go undiagnosed with a mean. What if the patient cannot or is not absorbing nutrients as he or she should? Levels can then be quite variable so one poke in the arm at the lab doesn't cut it. In fact, there is a YouTube video about a former doctor who was just normal as could be, fell ill, and deteriorated rapidly to the point he had to be diapered. It turned out to be a vitamin B deficiency. I know we have discussed that here at length.

On the one hand; Soccertese, I am inclined to agree with you that a thiamine supplementation as cure is too facile; too good to be true. Yet, this case study was just published last year:

Psychosomatics. 2013 May-Jun;54(3):277-83. doi: 10.1016/j.psym.2013.02.001. Epub 2013 Mar 6.

Old disease, new look? A first report of parkinsonism due to scurvy, and of refeeding-induced worsening of scurvy.


I think the take away in all of this is that vitamins, trace minerals and metals are crucial to the healthy cellular function in our brains. It is all a delicate balance. Many studies show that copper, zinc, and iron levels are not as they should be in the PD brain. Who it to say that these simple basic nutrient panels; often overlooked, are not very real contributing factors to protein misfiling and brain disease?

Then there is this...we all know that Wilson's Disease can mimic PD and that it is due to a genetic mutation causing copper metabolism problems. Serious ones.

The role of Thiamine in Wilson's Disease...

Turns out thiamine deficiency plays a role here too.