Ask A Scientist© Biology Archive

Author:      saabsaab
Text:        I am interested in collecting information on Parkinson's Disease.  
Can you help me?

Response #:  1 of 1
Author:      psych
Text:        Some possible sources include a neuroscience reference, a 
neurology text, a neurologist, neuroanatomy references.  Basically Parkinson's 
disease is a movement disorder.  It gets more and more difficult to move.  One 
of the primary brain lesions associated with this disease is a shrinkage of an 
area in the brain stem called the substantia nigra.  This is thought to be 
associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine and there seems to decreased 
production of the dopamine in this area.  Some medications do seem to help 
including a dopamine replacement medicine called Sinemet.  There are some new 
medicines coming out that may also help.  Another exciting area is trying to 
get new dopamine cells to grow in the substantia nigra area, one way is to 
insert a needle into the area and inject immature nerve cells into the area 
and hope they will grow up to be mature dopamine producers, so far it is still 
considered somewhat experimental.  The disease is thought to be caused by 
progressive cell loss.  Some cases have been caused by people who synthesized 
drugs to abuse and they made a mistake and a bunch of young people took the 
drug and ended up with the disease.  The silver lining of this is that this 
drug also will do the same thing in rats, so now there is an animal model for 
Parkinson's.