“Float Like a butterfly sting like a bee”...the longest fight of the Muhammad Ali - Parkinson's disease, about to get KO'd by Genetic Engineering?  





During a 1991 US television interview with Bryant Gumbel, Muhammad Ali, legendary boxer, and crowned sportsmen of the century in 1999, described his condition as a “trial”. When he lifted the Olympic flame during the 1996 summer Olympic games opening ceremony in Atlanta his arms and upper body shook wildly. Janet Evans (the American swimmer who handed him the torch) said “It was all about courage … it was written around his body that he was not going to let it do him in”. 

In this week’s post, we explore the causes and treatment of Parkinson’s disease, and more importantly the possible future cures.



Cause: Parkinson’s is caused by the progressive loss of nerve cells in the part of the brain called the Substantia Nigra. These nerve cells are involved in the production of Dopamine: a neurotransmitter in the brain that acts as a messenger between the parts of the brain and the nervous system helping the control of body movement. The loss and damage of these nerve cells subsequently reduces the production of dopamine in the brain, hence reduces the efficiency of brain in controlling body movement; causing tremor, bradykinesia (slowness of movement), and muscle stiffness, each symptoms of Parkinson’s. It is not known why the loss of nerve cells associated with dopamine production happens, but genetic factors have shown to increase in a person’s risks of developing Parkinson disease (faulty genes from being passed onto children by parents- but the chances of inheritance of Parkinson’s is rare).

Treatments of Parkinson’s disease consists of the following:
1. Supportive therapies - physiotherapy (done to relieve muscle stiffness and joint pain via movement manipulation and exercise). Occupational therapy (working out practical solutions for areas of difficulty in everyday life).
2. Medication – prescribed to improve the main symptoms of Parkinson’s – tremors and movement problems, but vary depending on individual.
3. Deep brain stimulation – surgically implanting a pulse generator like a heart pacemaker into the chest wall which is connected to wires under the skins that is connected to specific areas in the brain. Pulse generated through the pulse stimulator runs through the wires and stimulate the part of the brain effected by the Parkinson’s disease easing the symptoms of the disease for some people.

Cures: the treatments listed above are primarily responsible for reducing the symptoms of Parkinson’s and improving the quality of an individual’s life, yet sadly there is no cure. However, new breakouts in research support the idea of using genetic engineering to modify self-cells in the brain programming them into induced dopamine neurons that reverse the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

A laboratory animal study experiment done on mice with Parkinson’s disease found that when researchers injected a specially engineered virus (to introduce a combination of genes) into the brain of a mice, the virus converted cells in the brain known as Astrocytes (must abundant types of glial cells in the brain associated with neural responses but involved in the production of dopamine) into dopamine producing cells which the researchers called Induced Dopamine Neurons. When testing the movement of the mice on a treadmill – they saw aspects of improvement, which lead to the conclusion it is possible to modify glial cells found in the brain into Induced dopamine producing nerve cells that can be used to treat Parkinson’s in the future with technological advances and advanced further research.
The findings are promising; however, the approach has not been tested on humans with Parkinson’s, and it is difficult to know with certainty whether the cells would function as expected and if the result would be long term.
Nevertheless, it is clear improvements in technology and advances in findings allow us to delve into more promising results and future.

Hope this has been insightful and widened your knowledge upon the importance and use of research within medicine in our society, by Universal Medicine Team (Mathew George)



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