http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...06452214006198
This drug is used for diabetes but looks promising off label for pd. It is well tolerated and is extracted from french lilac plant, also known as goat's rue. Galega officinallis. It is also used for its anti-aging effect. I am sure *admin edit* will pan it, though I think it may be beneficial. Hope to try the plant extract, if not the drug itself. What say ye?

Blackfeather, it is an interesting paper.

However, the researchers used a chemical (1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine) to induce a Parkinson's-like state in experimental animals (mice) before treating them with metformin.

I think that much more work needs to be done before metformin can approved for treatment of humans who live with Parkinson's Disease.

...discussed here...

http://www.nature.com/cddis/journal/...s2014175a.html

Thank you for that link lurkingforacure.

The paper looks very impressive to me.

Based on it, I think that there may be a good case for a well-designed (double blind) Randomised Control Trial, testing the efficacy of metformin as therapy for people with Parkinson's Disease.

Depending on its results, metformin could get approval for treatment of people with Parkinson's Disease.

So can Aspirin help too? What do you think?

http://www.lef.org/WhatsHot/2012/4/M...mended/Page-01

"Aspirin, metformin share common mechanism

Aspirin, metformin share common mechanismApril 23, 2012. A report by scientists from McMaster University, the University of Dundee and the University of Melbourne, published online on April 19, 2012 in the journal Science suggests a common mechanism for salicylate—aspirin's active compound—and the drug metformin in decreasing the risk of several diseases.

"Salicylate, a plant product, has been in medicinal use since ancient times," Simon A. Hawley and colleagues write in their introduction to the article. "More recently, it has been replaced by synthetic derivatives such as aspirin and salsalate, both rapidly broken down to salicylate in vivo."

The authors explain that salsalate or aspirin administered in high doses result in the activation by salicylate of adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a regulator of cell growth and metabolism. AMPK is known to be activated by exercise as well as the antidiabetic drug metformin. "We're finding this old dog of aspirin already knows new tricks," commented co-principle investigator Dr Greg Steinberg, who is an associate professor of medicine in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and the Canada Research Chair in Metabolism and Obesity. "In the current paper we show that, in contrast to exercise or metformin which increase AMPK activity by altering the cells' energy balance, the effects of salicylate are totally reliant on a single Ser108 amino acid of the beta 1 subunit.

"We show that salicylate increases fat burning and reduces liver fat in obese mice and that this does not occur in genetically modified mice lacking the beta1 subunit of AMPK," he noted.

The fact that both metformin and aspirin activate AMPK suggests that their recently publicized benefits in reducing the risk of cancer could be due to a shared mechanism. However, only further studies can confirm the validity of this interesting hypothesis.
Imad

Thanks for that link imark3000.

A Cochrane Collaboration study analysed 14 clinical trials in which the effects NSAIDs in primary and secondary prevention of PD were examined.

So far the evidence is inconclusive.

See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22071848 for more on this.