Parkinson's and LDL Cholesterol

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LDL cholesterol link...

Pieces coming together in Parkinson's, cholesterol puzzle
April 4, 2008 - In 2006, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers published a study that found people with low levels of LDL cholesterol are more likely to have Parkinson's disease than people with high LDL levels.

But that study could not answer the question of whether low LDL (low-density lipoprotein) levels were present in study participants before they were diagnosed with Parkinson’s, or if they developed low LDL levels after being diagnosed. Now a follow-up study led by UNC researchers in collaboration with colleagues in Virginia, Hawaii and Japan has found that low LDL levels were present in a group of men of Japanese ancestry long before these men were diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

“This finding gives us one more piece in the puzzle about the role of cholesterol in Parkinson’s disease,” said Dr. Xuemei Huang, the study’s principal investigator. Huang is also medical director of the Movement Disorder Clinic at UNC Hospitals and an assistant professor of neurology in the UNC School of Medicine. “What makes these results especially useful is the fact that most of the men in this study were not taking cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins,” Huang said. “This suggests that the association between low LDL levels and Parkinson’s exists independently from statin use, which helps answer another important question raised by our earlier study.”

The new study was published online this week by the journal Movement Disorders. Huang is the lead author. Her co-authors include Drs. G. Webster Ross and Helen Petrovitch, who are both with the Pacific Health Research Institute, the Veterans Affairs Pacific Islands Health Care System and the University of Hawaii; Dr. Robert D. Abbott of the University of Virginia and Shiga University in Japan; and Dr. Richard B. Mailman, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the UNC School of Medicine.

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Loss of smell may be early sign of Parkinson’s
Fri., April. 4, 2008 - Finding could be used as screening tool for the disease, researchers say

An impaired sense of smell is known to be associated with Parkinson's disease — and now a study in the Annals of Neurology shows that the loss of smell may predate the onset of clinical symptoms by several years. "Olfactory screening could help in the early detection of Parkinson's disease before the typical motor signs are evident," lead investigator Dr. G. Webster Ross told Reuters Health.

Ross of the VA Pacific Islands Health Care System, Honolulu, and colleagues evaluated data from a standardized test of odor identification from 2,267 men of Japanese ancestry participating in an aging study. All were free of clinical Parkinson's disease and dementia at the time of testing. The average age at study entry was 80 years old and the men were followed for up to 8 years.

During follow-up, 35 men were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, giving an overall incidence of 24.6 cases per 10,000 persons per year. The average time to diagnosis was 4 years and the average age was 83 years. After taking into consideration the potential influence of age, the incidence of Parkinson's disease was 8.4 per 10,000 persons per year for those with the highest smell identification scores and 54.5 per 10,000 persons per year in those with the lowest scores.

More Loss of smell early sign of Parkinson's - More health news - MSNBC.com

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Blood pressure/dementia link...

Blood pressure 'link to dementia'
Tuesday, 8 July 2008 - Controlling blood pressure from middle-age onwards may cut the chances of developing dementia, say researchers.

Two studies support a link between high blood pressure and dementia risk - with one by an Imperial College London team suggesting treatment could cut this. This study, by published in the Lancet Neurology journal, found blood pressure drugs reduce dementia by 13%. The Alzheimer's Society said better control could save 15,000 lives a year. "Only half of people over 65 receive effective treatment, yet we know treatment works" - Professor Clive Ballard, Alzheimer's Society

As many as one in four people has high blood pressure, in many cases undiagnosed or untreated. The precise reasons why high blood pressure might increase the risk of dementia are not fully understood although many scientists believe that it can starve the brain of bloodflow and the oxygen it carries. Patients suffering this restricted bloodflow are often described as having "vascular dementia", and account for approximately a quarter of dementia patients.

Other types of dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease, have no obvious link to bloodflow, but some experts think that blood pressure may still be somehow contributory in some cases. The Lancet Neurology study looked at a trial of elderly patients with high blood pressure to see if those who were receiving treatment were less likely to develop any form of dementia compared with those left untreated.

Clear benefit

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Now I know why great-grampa smoked Camels...

Nicotine drug 'may slow dementia'
Sunday, 13 July 2008 : Nicotine-based drugs may help delay the moment a person with dementia has to enter a care home, researchers say.

Nicotine has toxic effects, and carries a strong risk of addiction, but scientists have shown it can also boost learning, memory and attention. The effect is small, but it may help give dementia patients up to six extra months of independent living.

A team at King's College London have demonstrated the positive effects of nicotine in experiments on rats. "It may be possible for medicinal chemists to devise compounds that provide some of the beneficial effects of nicotine while cutting out the toxic effects" - Professor Ian Stolerman, Institute of Psychiatry

They showed that nicotine boosted the animals' ability to carry out a task accurately - particularly when they were also distracted. When able to give full concentration, the animals responded correctly to stimuli about 80% of the time. Nicotine boosted the accuracy rate by about 5%. However, when distracted, the animals' success rate fell to about 55%. In this case nicotine brought it back up to around the 85% level.

Biochemical mechanisms

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Hope it can help Dr. Steven Hawking...

Scientists Turn Skin Cells Into Motor Neurons in ALS Patients
July 31, 2008 - Feat could one day lead to tailor-made cells to treat fatal disease, researchers say

Scientists have turned skin cells from patients with Lou Gehrig's disease into motor neurons that are genetically identical to the patients' own neurons. An unlimited number of these neurons can now be created and studied in the laboratory, a capability which should result in a better understanding of the disease and, one day, lead to new treatments or even the production of healthy cells that can replace the diseased ones.

"The hope of some scientists is that they might be able to harness stem cells and program them to generate pluripotent stem cell lines [capable of differentiating into many different types of cells] which have the genes of patients," said Kevin Eggan, co-author of a paper appearing July 31 in the online version of Science. "This would open up the possibility of producing a large supply of immune-matched cells to that patient that could be used in transplantation methodologies."

"The other hope, and one that's much closer upon us . . . is if you could produce the cell types that become sick in that person, you might be able to use them in the laboratory to come to understand basic aspects of the disease and take the study of disease out of patients, where it's very difficult, and put it into the Petri dish," added Eggan, who is a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and spoke about the research at a teleconference Wednesday. However, the actual therapeutic potential of this approach is still years away.

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Parkinson's and vitamin D...

Parkinson's linked to vitamin D
Monday, 13 October 2008 - Scientists are testing whether vitamin D supplements can ease symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

A US team found 55% of Parkinson's patients had insufficient levels of vitamin D, compared to 36% of healthy elderly people. However, the Emory University researchers do not yet know if the vitamin deficiency is a cause or the result of having Parkinson's. The study appears in the journal Archives of Neurology. Parkinson's disease affects nerve cells in several parts of the brain, particularly those that use the chemical messenger dopamine to control movement.

The most common symptoms are tremor, stiffness and slowness of movement. These can be treated with oral replacement of dopamine. Previous studies have shown that the part of the brain affected most by Parkinson's, the substantia nigra, has high levels of the vitamin D receptor, which suggests vitamin D may be important for normal functions of these cells.

Sunlight

Vitamin D is found in the diet, but is primarily formed in the skin by exposure to sunlight. However, the body's ability to produce the vitamin decreases with age, making older people more prone to deficiency. One theory is that people with Parkinson's may be particularly vulnerable because their condition limits the amount of time they spend out of doors. However, scientists say it may also be possible that low vitamin D levels are in some way related to the genesis and origin of the disease.

The researchers examined vitamin D levels in 100 people with Parkinson's, 100 with Alzheimer's disease and 100 who were healthy. The groups were matched for age, and economic circumstance. Among the Parkinson's group 23% of patients had vitamin D levels so low that they could be described as deficient. In the Alzheimer's group the figure was 16%, and in the healthy group 10%. The researchers said the findings were striking because the study group came from the South West of the US, where sunny weather is the norm.

'Intriguing finding'

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Double Vitamin D, Kids' Doctors Say
Oct. 13, 2008 - Pediatricians Urge Twice-Daily Recommendation May Reduce Risk Of Cancer, Diabetes And Heart Disease

A report from the American Academy of Pediatrics says children, from newborns to teens, should get twice the previously recommended daily amount of Vitamin D. New studies have found it may help reduce risks of cancer, diabetes and heart disease, in addition to keeping bones strong.

Those studies mean that many American children, like David Osorio, are Vitamin D deficient, reports CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook. Osorio is only six-years-old and has already suffered bone fractures in both arms. "I fell off the slide and first I broke this wrist," Osorio said cradling his left arm in his right hand.

But the root cause of those broken bones is more than a boisterous boy at play, LaPook reports, it's also a serious lack of Vitamin D. "It's a very preventable thing if you're up on your nutrition - it seems easy enough to supplement with Vitamin D rather than suffer the consequences of having a broken bone," says Dr. Shevaun Doyle.

The new advice replaces a 2003 academy recommendation for 200 units daily. That's the amount the government recommends for children and adults up to age 50; 400 units is recommended for adults aged 51 to 70 and 600 units for those aged 71 and up. Vitamin D is sold in drops for young children, capsules and tablets.

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Granny says aging comes from gettin' old...

Scientists Find a Possible Cause of Aging
November 26, 2008 - A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice.

They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health. The finding, published online Wednesday in the journal Cell, is from a group led by David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School. It is part of a growing effort by biologists to understand the sirtuins and other powerful agents that control the settings on the living cell’s metabolism, like its handling of fats and response to insulin.

Researchers are just beginning to figure out how these agents work and how to manipulate them, hoping that they can develop drugs to enhance resistance to disease and to retard aging. Sirtris, a company Dr. Sinclair helped found, has developed a number of chemicals that mimic resveratrol and are potentially more suitable as drugs since they activate sirtuin at much lower doses than resveratrol. This month, one of these chemicals was reported in the journal Cell Metabolism to protect mice on fatty diets from getting obese and to enhance their endurance in treadmills, just as resveratrol does.

Though the sirtuin field holds considerable promise, the dust has far from settled. Resveratrol is a powerful agent with many different effects, only some of which are exerted through sirtuin. So drugs that activate sirtuin may not be as splendid a tonic for people as resveratrol certainly seems to be for mice. The new finding concerns maintenance of the chromosomes, the giant molecules of DNA that make up the genome.

More http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/he...tml?ref=health

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Brain scans show root of aging's memory glitch
Wed., Nov. 26, 2008 - Elderly are more easily distracted while learning new things, study says

Brain scans of older people in a noisy lab machine give biological backing to the idea that distraction hampers memory with aging, researchers reported Wednesday. The finding bolsters a theory about one reason why memory weakens with age: older people have more trouble remembering some things because they’re more easily distracted when they try to learn them.

The memory exercise reported in the latest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience dealt with recognizing faces, but the findings apply to the more general task of trying to remember something a person sees or hears, said lead author Dale Stevens. Stevens, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, did the work while at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto. Older people who have to learn something should do all they can to focus on that task and eliminate potential distractions, he advised.

The study compared 10 healthy people in their 60s and 70s to a dozen younger volunteers, ages 22 to 36. Their brains were scanned while they looked at photographs of people they did not know. As each photograph was displayed for one second, the volunteers were asked if they’d seen it before in the study. In all they saw 180 different faces, of which 120 showed up a second time. The older participants failed to recognize a face they’d already seen 43 percent of the time, compared to 26 percent for the younger volunteers.

More http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27931210/

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REM sleep disorder may be sign of early Parkinson's...

Can a Sleep Disorder Predict Parkinson's?
Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 - Calming the tremors of Parkinson disease remains a challenge for both patients and doctors alike, but new research suggests that future therapies for the condition may emerge from an unlikely place: people's sleep habits.

Scientists at Sacre Coeur Hospital at the University of Montreal report in the journal Neurology that Parkinson can be predicted relatively accurately up to 12 years before the first muscle tremors appear. People diagnosed with an unusual sleep condition called REM sleep disorder, in which they physically act out their dreams by kicking, screaming and even harming themselves and others lying next to them, are 18% more likely to develop a neurodegenerative disease like dementia or Parkinson within five years of their diagnosis, and 52% more likely after 12 years. "We have been aware of the potential connection between REM sleep disorder and these diseases for some time, but this is the largest and longest study to estimate the true risk of getting Parkinson and other neurodegenerative diseases if someone has the sleep disorder," says Dr. Ron Postuma, the study's author and a neurologist at Montreal General Hospital.

The trial involved nearly 100 men and women with an average age of 65, all diagnosed with REM sleep disorder. During normal sleep, our muscles become paralyzed when we enter the REM, or dream state, which explains why inside our dreams, we occasionally feel as if we can't move or are operating in slow motion. People with REM sleep disorder, however, never achieve this muscle relaxation, and researchers now believe that this could be the first signs of Parkinson. The latest thinking on the disease holds that the uncontrolled movements that are the hallmark of Parkinson are only the latest, and most advanced signs of the disease, the final stage of a 10 or 20 year gradual decline in nerve function. In fact, experts believe that the condition actually begins with a loss of smell, with degeneration of nerves in the olfactory tract, then proceeds to the gut and brain stem. At some point along this march, the nerve damage hits the pons, a region in the brain that regulates sleep. "So in Parkinson, there is a period, that we don't know how long it lasts, in which the neurons are dying in the brain, just not in the motor areas," says Postuma. "And sleep is an area where this degeneration occurs, indicating that the process of Parkinson has started."

Postuma stresses that REM sleep disorder is a rare condition not to be confused with the tossing and turning that most of us do every night. People with the condition have vivid movements nearly every night, and unlike those who sleep walk or sleep talk and remain confused for a bit after they awake, these patients are completely alert and oriented once they wake up. REM sleep disorder itself can be treated with medications, but those drugs still won't slow the decline in nerve function that's responsible for Parkinson. But identifying Parkinson at this earlier stage may help scientists to come up with newer ways of protecting the motor neurons from further damage. "We don't have agents now to stop the degeneration of Parkinson," says Postuma. "But once we have those agents, as far as I'm concerned, every patient with REM sleep disorder should be taking it."

Can a Sleep Disorder Predict Parkinson's? - TIME