Pesticide levels in blood linked to Parkinson's disease, researchers find

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept16498/files/538211.html

Pesticide levels in blood linked to Parkinson's disease, researchers find

DALLAS — July 13, 2009 — People with Parkinson’s disease have significantly higher blood levels of a particular pesticide than healthy people or those with Alzheimer’s disease, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

In a study appearing in the July issue of Archives of Neurology, researchers found the pesticide beta-HCH (hexachlorocyclohexane) in 76 percent of people with Parkinson’s, compared with 40 percent of healthy controls and 30 percent of those with Alzheimer’s.

The finding might provide the basis for a beta-HCH blood test to identify individuals at risk for developing Parkinson’s disease. The results also point the way to more research on environmental causes of Parkinson’s.

“There’s been a link between pesticide use and Parkinson’s disease for a long time, but never a specific pesticide,” said Dr. Dwight German, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and a senior author of the paper. “This is particularly important because the disease is not diagnosed until after significant nerve damage has occurred. A test for this risk factor might allow for early detection and protective treatment.”

About 1 million people in the U.S. have Parkinson’s, a number expected to rise as the population ages. The disease occurs when brain cells in particular regions die, causing tremors, cognitive problems and a host of other symptoms.

The study involved 113 participants, ages 50 to 89. Fifty had Parkinson’s, 43 were healthy and 20 had Alzheimer’s. The researchers tested the subjects’ blood for 15 pesticides known as organochlorines.

These pesticides, which include the well-known DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), were widely used in the U.S. from the 1950s to the 1970s but are more tightly regulated now. They persist in the environment for years without breaking down. In the body, they dissolve in fats and are known to attack the type of brain nerves that die in Parkinson’s disease, the researchers said.

“Much higher levels of the beta-HCH were in the air, water and food chain when the Parkinson’s patients were in their 20s and 30s,” Dr. German said. “Also, the half-life of the pesticide is seven to eight years, so it stays in the body for a long time.”

Parkinson’s disease is more common among rural men than other demographic groups, but it is not a matter of a single factor causing the devastating disease, Dr. German said.

“Some people with Parkinson’s might have the disease because of exposure to environmental pesticides, but there are also genes known to play a role in the condition,” Dr. German said.

Although the current study points to an interesting link between the pesticide beta-HCH and Parkinson’s, there could be other pesticides involved with the disease, he said.

For example, the pesticide lindane often contains beta-HCH, but lindane breaks down faster. Beta-HCH might simply be a sign that someone was exposed to lindane, with lindane actually causing the damage to the brain, the researchers said.

In future research, Dr. German hopes to test patients from a wider geographical area and to measure pesticide levels in post-mortem brains. He and his team also are collecting blood samples from both patients with Parkinson’s and their spouses to see if a genetic difference might be making the one with Parkinson’s more susceptible to pesticides than the other.

Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were Dr. Padraig O’Suilleabhain, associate professor of neurology; Dr. Ramón Diaz-Arrastía, professor of neurology; and Dr. Joan Reisch, professor of clinical sciences. Researchers from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, including lead author Dr. Jason Richardson, and the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute in New Jersey also participated in the study.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute on Aging, the Dallas Area Parkinsonism Society, Rowe & Co. Inc., the Dallas Foundation and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Visit www.utsouthwestern.org/neurosciences to learn more about UT Southwestern’s clinical services in neurosciences, including psychiatry.

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Media Contact: Aline McKenzie
214-648-3404
[e-mail]

[hunter]

1. I suspect pesticides are responsible for a lot of nasty.

Prenatal exposures can't be good.

[Duer 157099]

2. Interesting. Not surprising, of course

I wonder about this quote: "In the body, they dissolve in fats and are known to attack the type of brain nerves that die in Parkinson’s disease, the researchers said."

That seems to imply that other types of neurons do not die when exposed to that chemical. That would be very surprising to me.

[murielm99]

3. Many older farmers have Parkinson's.

They used pesticides to spray their crops when they were young and active. Studies or no studies, those of us who live in agricultural communities know why so many elderly farmers have this illness.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Olestra for the treatment of organic halogen poisoning

It's an emerging treatment for halogen acne (chloracne) and dioxin poisoning. Beta-HCH is the same kind of toxin. The amount of Olestra used is equivalent to 2-3 ounces of Pringles fat-free potato chips.

"http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/4976">Olestra diet helps rid body of toxins" at ScienceBlog is a starting point -- search on the investigators' names. There were at least a dozen monographs on the subject this past spring when the story broke in the popular press.

In anticipation of the inevitable -- DON'T self-treat without doing research AND consulting with your physician. A two ounce daily portion of Pringles is not likely to hurt you, but this should be your S.O.P. for ALL self-care and "alternative" treatment. Science demands strict attention to detail!

--d!

[Nihil]

5. Ha! You can't fool us!

> A two ounce daily portion of Pringles is not likely to hurt you

You're obviously part of BigPringle!! Pringles are teh evul so you
and your NWO enablers are just trying to sneak those flavours around
the diet barrier so that we'll be hooked on the MSG and be totally
in your power!

Ha! Take *that*!
:crazy:

[kestrel91316]

6. Wow. A persistent neurotoxic pesticide causing NEUROLOGICAL

problems in a non-target species.......

No one could have predicted THIS.

[depakid]

7. +1

I guess we're getting old.

[phantom power]

8. Michael Crichton assured me that DDT regulation was Bad Science.

Bad Science perpetrated by Dirty Fucking Hippies. It says so right in State of Fear. With footnotes!

[pscot]

9. I took a master gardener's course

back in the early '70s, and the guy who taught the part on pest control was big on lindane as the ultimate bug killer. It had just been banned, and the catchword for the rest of the course became, "lindane, if you can get it".

[bigmonkey]

10. There was a NOVA program that intimated this in 1986.

The program was about spontaneous cases of Parkinson's in victims of designer heroin. What the program blurb doesn't tell you is that the researchers discovered that it wasn't the designer heroin per se that was causing the problem, but an intermediate product of its metabolism in the body. It was killing the substantia nigra in the brains of the victims, causing instant Parkinson's.

But here's the kicker:
One of the researchers recognizes the molecule, and realizes that it's very similar to a herbicide. Then the program demonstrated that if you mapped the distribution of use of that herbicide and compared it to the mapped distribution of Parkinson's, lo and behold they were very similar.

I remember thinking at the time that this would result in changes in herbicide use, but it fell out of the media spotlight. Mention something once in the MSM, might as well never have mentioned it, except you can now cite that the info was broadcast.

This was the episode:

Case of the Frozen Addict (The)
In July 1982, a 42-year-old addict in a San Jose, California jail became paralyzed—unable to move or talk. His symptoms, caused by a bad batch of synthetic heroin, were indistinguishable from those associated with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative nerve disorder that strikes the elderly. NOVA traces the story of a "designer" drug which could lead to a major medical breakthrough.
Original broadcast date: 02/18/86
Topic: medicine/disease & research

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Not deeply surprising. HCH is allosteric with inositol.

So likely to bind to inositol receptors ... whatever they do (not a bio- or medicinal chemist, just an organic chemist).