Will the medicine "from the liver" help with Parkinson's disease?

Specialists from the University of Sheffield conducted a large-scale study on the search for new drugs for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. For more than five years, they have tested more than 2,000 compounds on skin cell cultures of patients with this common neurodegenerative disease of advanced age.

The purpose of the search was to identify molecules capable of restoring the functioning of "faulty" mitochondria – biological energy generators that feed all cells of the body. Disruption of the functioning of these organelles is considered one of the main causes of the death of neurons synthesizing the neurotransmitter dopamine in Parkinson's disease.

Dopaminergic neurons on tomograms of the brain of a healthy person (left)
and a patient with Parkinson's disease (right).The most promising of the identified candidates is a synthetic drug known as ursodeoxycholic acid.

This drug is licensed and has been used in clinical practice for several decades to treat a number of liver diseases. This means the possibility of immediate initiation of a clinical trial dedicated to the study of the safety and tolerability of the drug in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease.

The study will also allow us to determine the optimal dosage that ensures the supply of a sufficient amount of ursodeoxycholic acid to the region of the brain suffering from this disease. The information obtained will be used to plan large-scale randomized clinical trials to study the effectiveness of the drug in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

To date, even the most effective drugs can only partially stop the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, without having any effect on its causes. The authors hope that ursodeoxycholic acid and its derivatives will affect the root causes of the disease and slow its progression, which will make life easier for a huge number of people suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Article by H. Mortiboys et al. Ursocholanic acid rescues mitochondrial function in common forms of familial Parkinson's disease published in the journal Brain.

Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the University of Sheffield:
Ground breaking research identifies promising drugs for treating Parkinson's.

10.09.2013