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Parkinson’s Study Claims The Disease Causes Brain Cells To Burn Out

Brain Cells

A team of scientists at the University of Montreal have discovered that certain brain cells in people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease burn out and the discovery could prove to be a an important key for research into how the disease develops.

Parkinson’s disease is caused by the loss of nerve cells in the brain and affects sufferers with slow movement, inflexibility, and stiffness. Only a small amount of the billions of brain cells degenerate with the illness, and until now, scientists were unable to explain why, reports The Telegraph.

The team of scientists discovered through studying mice that the cell most involved with the illness had higher energy requirements than others.

The neurons involved with Parkinson’s “need to produce an incredible amount of energy to function,” said Louis Eric Trudeau, a professor in neurosciences and pharmacology.

Like a motor constantly running at high speed, these neurons need to produce an incredible amount of energy to function. They appear to exhaust themselves and die prematurely.

Trudeau has hopes that the findings of his research will produce more effective ways of representing the illness in research animals. He says that reproducing the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in mice is difficult, even when human genes are inserted into their genomes, according to Medical News Today.

The research team suggests that their findings could lead to medication being developed that helps increase the energy efficiency of cells or reduce the energy requirement, reports BBC.

Dr. Arthur Roach at the charity Parkinson’s UK notes that this study allows insight into the cells that are affected and “strong support to the idea that it is the unique structure and function of these cells that makes them especially susceptible to a damaging process called oxidative stress.” The hope is that this study will lead to further research and new treatments.

This study provides strong support to the idea that it is the unique structure and function of these cells that makes them especially susceptible to a damaging process called oxidative stress (…) We hope that this study will rekindle interest in the approach, and even lead to new treatments based on the most up-to-date ideas about oxidative stress.

In an unrelated study, scientists recently discovered that Parkinson’s disease is linked to 16 types of cancer.

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