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Flies May Hold Key to New Parkinson's Treatments By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - American scientists have created fruitflies with symptoms of Parkinson's disease which could provide new insights into how to treat the irreversible brain disorder. Like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's involves the death of nerve cells and the buildup of fiber and protein deposits in the brain. Until recently scientists understood very little about the disease but the identification of genetic mutations that lead to changes in the brain has allowed scientists to develop insect and animal models. The fruitflies, known scientifically as Drosophila melanogaster, will allow researchers to study the underlying causes of Parkinson's disease and to quickly test new drugs that could prevent it or slow down its progression. ``The fly model is remarkably similar to the human disorder,'' Mel Feany, of the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, told Reuters Wednesday. ``Every time we learn something more about how the nervous system functions we are a little bit closer to a cure for the disease.'' Flies Make Good Models For Drug Trials The flies, which have a lifespan of about 60 days, are popular for laboratory experiments because they have many of the same genes as humans. They are wonderful models for drug trials because they are small, cheap, develop symptoms rapidly and easily eat drugs placed in their food. Feany and her colleague Welcome Bender created the transgenic fruitflies by inserting a human gene called alpha-synuclein which is involved in Parkinson's disease. The transgenic frutiflies showed many of the physical traits of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease and even some behavioral characteristics, they said in a report in the science journal Nature. ``Our particular interest is getting at some of the basic mechanisms of the disease. We want to use our Drosophilia genetics to identify novel genes and proteins that are important in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease in people,'' Feany said. Parkinson's disease affects about one in every 100 people over the age of 65 and one in 50 people over 80 years old. Boxing legend Muhammad Ali and the actor Michael J Fox are sufferers of the disease. Symptoms include twitching of muscles, poor balance and difficulty in moving. ``The short generation time of flies makes them invaluable tools for drug screening, and our in-depth knowledge of their genetics will aid in the identification of genes that affect the onset and progression of this debilitating disease,'' Christian Haass and Philipp Kahle, of the University of Munich in Germany, said in a research commentary in Nature magazine.