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THURSDAY, Sept. 12 (HealthDayNews) -- One of the hallmarks of Parkinson's disease is slow movement, and a researcher from Rutgers University believes he's discovered why this occurs.
By studying rats with chemically induced Parkinson's, the researcher was able to see that the disease caused connections in the brain to reorganize and send signals to different parts of the body than they were originally programmed to control. Results of the study appear in the October issue of The Journal of Comparative Neurology.
The researcher, Mark West, a behavioral neuroscientist at Rutgers, likens this area of the brain to a switchboard, and says Parkinson's disease changes the switchboard wires around.
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"If the wires are switched, information isn't getting to the right area," he explains, which makes it difficult for the body to respond.
The bad news, he says, is it's not likely that medications would ever be able to reverse these new connections.
However, neurologist Dr. Christina Drafta, of New York University Medical Center, points out that slow movement is only one symptom of Parkinson's, and there are still many other aspects of the disease that may eventually be more treatable. "I don't think there is no hope," she adds.
Parkinson's disease affects as many as 1.5 million Americans, according to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation. The main symptoms include rigidity, tremor, slow movement, poor balance and problems walking. The exact cause of Parkinson's remains a mystery, but researchers do know that many of the symptoms occur because of a severe shortage of a brain chemical known as dopamine. There is no cure for the disease, but there are medications that can help control some of the symptoms.
For this study, West and his colleagues chemically induced Parkinson's disease in rats on one side of their brain so they could compare the changes to the normal side of the brain.
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