I attended the Udall Centers Meeting in Pittsburgh last week. There was a NINDS meeting in the morning and then a two and 1/2 day meeting for the researchers from each center to report their work.

Needless to say it was fascinating but troublesome for all the reasons I've stated many times before. They are so interested in genetics now.....and how they interact. Cracking this code completely may be a mission impossible. They are doing fantastic work...but there are many genes........

The second most talked about subject was finding a better PD model. Old rats are hard to get. The MPTP model doesn't progress. Lab rats go for $ 8 -10,000 so remember that the next time someone asks a trial participant to pay for ANYTHING.

This was a surprise. i discovered the second day that the man sitting next to us was Heiko Braak. He spoke, but I must confess a lot of it was over my head.....

Ron, I asked one question on the last day after working up the nerve. it was about the blood brain barrier. Braak wasn't in the room. They all reacted much like Todd Scherer at FOX. Saying that not much had been done about it but they didn't discredit it. Then afterward, a member of Ole Isacson's team from Harvard came over and said in a nuclear stain test they did watch leakage into the substantia nigra, but that it isn't looked upon that favorably as a theory - he didn't know why.

I have the book with all the abstracts and will try to plug them in as subjects arise.

Then I was off to Joan Snyder's Shake Rattle and Roll. Had a lovely time - great bands! Joan knows her music. I met Robert [rd42] and his wife.......a lovely couple and Robert is way too young to have this illness....we must help his generation, it makes me sick to see such a good young guy like him have this damn illness.

Needed to add that the third issue to crop up very frequently was alpha synuclein.

more later,
paula