Parkinson's gains cited, but no cure soon

Environmental and genetic triggers are research targets while surgery and neuroprotective drugs slow the disease's relentless progress.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Oct. 17, 2005.

Washington -- Parkinson's disease is finally beginning to yield some of its secrets to persistent researchers.

"Progress has been flowering in the last few years," said Mel B. Feany, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"There is a world of difference between what we know about Parkinson's disease now and what we knew even five years ago," said Jose Garcia-Pedrosa, chief operating officer of the National Parkinson Foundation.

As the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the United States -- Alzheimer's disease holds the top spot -- Parkinson's disease affects about a million people.

Since Parkinson's is a disease of primarily older people, those numbers are likely to begin climbing as the population ages, said Dr. Feany at a Sept. 21 Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus.

The disease runs a lengthy course as increasing numbers of the brain's dopamine-producing neurons die. Its symptoms grow progressively worse over 20 years or more, moving from, for example, mild tremors to the inability to stand or walk.

A key goal of research is to determine why these neurons die, Dr. Feany said.

Although there have been major gains in understanding the disease, "the cause and cure have eluded us," Garcia-Pedrosa said in a separate interview. "People like to say we'll discover them in 10 years, but I think that expresses a hope more than a scientifically based reality."