Scientists uncover strong support for once-marginalized theory on Parkinson's disease

[Conductor71]

Originally Posted by Diego24

Are you sure about this statement ? I am reading about parkinson for 3 to 4 weeks only. But I don't remember Parkin mutation doesn't give raise to Lewy Bodies. I thought these Lewi Bodies were present in all form of Parkinson.

Quite sure. Researchers thought Lewy Bodies were so prevalent in the PD brain that they became the "Hallmark" of PD. Guess again.


Neuroprotection of Parkin against apoptosis is independent of inclusion body formation. (2005)

Abstract

Loss-of-function mutations in the parkin gene are known to result in autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism, 20which causes selective degeneration of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons in the absence of Lewy bodies. It is likely that Lewy body formation may be only a compensatory mechanism of dopaminergic neurons attempting to counteract toxicity, and not the ultimate cause of neuronal death.

Lewy Bodies also make an appearance in several other neurodegenerative diseases, so looks like we need a new calling card.

Originally Posted by Diego24

This is a good point. That is why I think the clinical trials are performed incorrectly. To give an example ... I read about a recent discovery in wich they found a gene that can predict whether your PD will progress very slow, slow, fast or very fast. So how can you do a clinical trial without taking this into account ?

You are sadly right about clinical trials. Not only do people progress at different rates, but YOPD is not the same as later age. Women and men also experience the disease quite differently. Oh, and you might not know yet know of SWEDDS - these are some of the 30% of people misdiagnosed with PD who are in clinical trials. This could be avoided if they bothered to use brain imaging when recruiting trial patients. What does that do for validity? The whole of PD research is based on some fairly shaky assumptions and with no scientific test for diagnosis or hard measure of progression...we will be long gone before they work all this out.

The only way around this quagmire will be using those pluri-potent cells and observing what goes on in sporadic PD cell degeneration; right now they are doing this in a patient with LRRK2.

[jerzy]

Known function of protein VPS-41 is the removal of cellular waste from neurons. VPS-41 could clear excess alpha-synuclein from the cell. This protein is stored in Tomatos.
Can we benefit from eating lots of tomatos ?

[jerzy]

Studies in animal and human cell cultures, demonstrated that VPS-41 not only protected against alpha-synuclein accumulation but also protected dopaminergic neurons from dying.

Originally Posted by jerzy

Studies in animal and human cell cultures, demonstrated that VPS-41 not only protected against alpha-synuclein accumulation but also protected dopaminergic neurons from dying.

Jerzy, I read about this one. Very interesting protein. But even if this protein is found in tomatoes, eating tomatoes is not going to help. As far as I read proteins do not cross the blood-brain barrier. If this is ever going to help people with PD, it has to be with gene therapy or modify to protein so it can enter the BBB.