having seen a post from Lurking in Rick's "crawling thread" posing the above question, I began to wonder if we had moved forward the debate over neuron death versus neuron recession. This was mentioned by Daffy some time ago in the thread :

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread6226.html

Whats the latest word from research, are our brain cells dying or lying dormant ?

Neil.

I havenot seen anything conclusive about this debate yet. I sort of check on the web for that info and ask my neurologist whenever I see her/

My own bias is that neurons are asleep or atleast lazy and dont hear the alarm! If they were all dying, treatment with agonists would not work.

girija

Neil,

Good question - I think one of the hopes of Isradipine (calcium channel blocker) is that by blocking the calcium from irritating the (non-)dopamine producing cells, that those cells would (eventually) rejuvenate - and start producing dopamine again. (I'm not sure what stage the clinical trial for Isradipine is in now)

I've been taking Isradipine for about 18 months now - and nothing miraculous for me so far. But what if this works but it takes 5 years before the cells start repairing themselves? I'm in it for the long haul. I still have hope for this to work. (I'm a "white lab rat" -- but my neurologist is happy to prescribe Isradipine since I have hypertension. Who would have imagined that would be a good thing?)

I think the main evidence for assuming death of the dopaminergic neurons is the loss of tyrosine hydroxylase-positive cells in PD substantia nigra observed post-mortem, compared to normal post-mortem SN. Also, the progressive loss of dopamine re-uptake as indicated by PET and SPECT data with labeled fluorodopa and beta CIT suggests cell death.

Robert