Parkinson’s disease responds positively to gene therapy

Parkinson's Disease Responds to Gene Therapy

Parkinson's disease patients can benefit from gene therapy according to a new study published Thursday in The Lancet.

Researchers applied the experimental gene therapy on 37 individuals diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Sixteen of them received gene therapy while 21 others had bogus treatments.

Motor skills of the participants who had gene therapy improved by 23 percent after six months compared to just 13 percent for the control group.

People suffering from Parkinson's disease lose a brain chemical called GABA which results in the loss of control of motor function. Gene therapy injects copies of a gene into the brain so that more GABA is produced.

"Gene therapy is no longer just a theory," said researcher Michael Kaplitt, neurosurgeon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "We are getting much closer to a reality where this treatment can be offered to patients."

The promising results by the gene therapy on Parkinson's disease patients may also be replicated for patients of related degenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease in the future.

New York University School of Medicine's Michael Hutchinson said in an attached commentary that the study did not show if gene therapy is more effective than deep brain stimulation, a procedure which has been used for ten years to treat Parkinson's disease.

Medications also help control symptoms of the disease, some of which are tremors, difficulty walking, slowness of movement and rigidity. In late stages, behavioral and cognitive decline including dementia may develop.

Gene therapy involves introducing a virus into the brain to induce GABA production. But some scientists are wary of the long-term consequences of this method to people with Parkinson's disease.

Posted by George Daniels on Friday March 18 2011, 6:46 AM EST. Ref: AP. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0