Hi!
What bothers me in this story is that even this meeting was funded by
Novartis Pharma AG and Orion Corporation Orion Pharma. Are these the
companies that manufacture L-dopa? All these physicians got together and
have concluded that levodopa is not harmful to neurons.
Unfortunately, most of the scientific facts are determined by general
consensus based on the available evidence at that time. That is the nature
of the beast.
This reminds me of something else that happened in 1982 in my field.
All the experts in the field of cancer biology got together and declared
that a cancer cell is born via mitosis of genetically damaged cell and gives
rise to "transformed focus formation in vitro" and that the same procedure
is involved in the tumorigenesis in vivo. Till today this is the gospel in
cancer biology and all the drugs are developed against mitotic cell
division, which ends up resulting in undesirable side effects of chemo such
as falling of hairs etc. I know for a fact that this is not true. Cancer
originates by a totally heretofore unknown mechanism which I call NEOSIS, a
novel type of cell division which is involved in tumorigenesis, tumor
progression into malignant state and recurrence of reistant tumors after
genotoxin-based anti-tumor therapy. I have decided to devote the rest of my
life to eliminate this misconception in cancer biology. But, I find
fighting against the establishment is not that easy. On top of that now I
have to worry about my PD.
Even Dr. Lieberman says conflicting things. One day he says
Levodopa is not toxic to neurons. Another day, he says, that the trick is
levodopa should be taken in smaller doses to avoid diskenesia. The
question, then, that begs itself is: What does low dose l-dopa do? Does it
just delay the onset of dyskenisia such that the patient dies of other
reasons before diskenesia develops (Is the reason why sinemet can be given
to older PD patients and not to the young onset PD patients?) or low dose
L-dopa completely eliminates theonset of diskenesia no matter how long you
take? Therefore, obviously there is some damage to neurons caused by
levodopa. I am quoting from a recent article by Misu et al., "Is DOPA a
neurotransmiter?" pubished in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 23,
No. 6, June 2002, pp. 262-267, without going into the nitty gritty of the
issues discussed the concuding statement says: "Levodopa might
release undetectable but functioning glutamate from the seondary neurons
.... In addition, leovodopa releases vesicular glutamate from striata to
elicit autooxidation-irrelevant neuronal death. ...levodopa....might
accelerate neuronal degeneration, particularly in progressive stages of the
disease".
Another issue has been nagging me for quite sometime. This might be a
good opportunity to bring this out openly, despite the risk of being
labelled "a fool". Often a foollish question yields some phenomenal answers
that might enlighten us. It is claimed by levodopoogists that the
introduction of levodopa has resulted in the increase in the survival of PD
patients. The belief is so strong that they even go to the extent of
calling that anybody that does not want to take levodopa is a fool. I am
not sure how far this is true. It is an accepted fact that L-dopa does not
retard the progression of the disease; in fact the opposite might be true.
Then how does one explain the claim that the introductionof L-dopa has
increased the longevity of the patients, although it is true that PD
patients live longer since then. Is there any double blind study to prove
that L-dopa is solely responsible for the increase in longevity or are the
other N number of nutritional supplements such as anti-oxidants and vitamins
etc that we all PWP desparately take on the faint hope that these might be
helpful in retarding the progression of the disease, might really be one of
the contributing factors in the increase in longevity?
All I have learned in the past year since my diagnosis of PD, is that
L-dopa is a temporary symptomatic relief of the symptoms of PD. You don't
have much choice than to increase the dose as the disease progresses and if
you do so, be ready for its ill effects. Pleae correct me if I am wrong.
Please pardon me for taking too much of your time.
Raj
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