N-Acetyl Cysteine May Support Dopamine Neurons in Parkinson's Disease: Preliminary Clinical and Cell Line Data

Compared to controls, the patients receiving NAC had improvements of 4-9 percent in dopamine transporter binding and also had improvements in their UPDRS score of about 13 percent.

PLOS ONE: N-Acetyl Cysteine May Support Dopamine Neurons in Parkinson's Disease: Preliminary Clinical and Cell Line Data

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0616141630.htm

Life Extension Mix, which I have taken for years, has a daily dose of 600 mg of NAC. Maybe that isn't enough or maybe a 13% improvement isn't noticeable given the vagaries of daily PD symptoms.

According to this image, 13% should be noticeable!

https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016..._1_540x360.jpg

I need to bump my intake from 1x to 2x daily.

If I am reading the article correctly, patients were given 1200 mg. Per day. Is this correct? Wonder if improvement coninues with NAC over the course of a year or longer. Whats a good brand ??

The results from this trial appear to be very good. But:
- the sample size is very small (12 in the NAC group, 11 in the control group, see Table 1);
- the trial is not blinded, and the size of the reported improvement is similar to the placebo effect reported in other studies;
- the confounding issues of gender, age and C/L use possibly favour the NAC result.

Still, the results are encouraging enough to justify a more powerful trial quickly. In the meantime, it may be worth taking NAC as a "therebo" (possible THERapy or placEBO).

John