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By Will Boggs, MD Monday, June 14, 2004 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Vaccination with certain immune cells suppresses inflammation and protects nerve cells from damage in mice with Parkinson's disease, new research shows. Dr. Howard E. Gendelman from University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, and colleagues administered special cells called copolymer-1 immune cells to mice 12 hours after being treated with a chemical that induces Parkinson's disease. The immune treatment dramatically reduced the death of striatal dopaminergic cells, the nerve cells that are lost with Parkinson's disease. Moreover, the immune cells seem to home in on regions with inflammation and prevent further damage, according to the report in the science journal PNAS Early Edition. Saving the nerve cells helps preserve production of dopamine, an important chemical that acts as messenger between nerve cells. When the immune treatment was not given, dopamine levels fell by 51 percent compared with a drop of just 4 percent when such treatment was given. "Inflammation is an important part of Parkinson's disease...and affecting it (through vaccination) may be a way to novel means to treat human disease," Gendelman told Reuters Health. "This work, in addition, is an approach that circumvents the use of stem and fetal cells...and thus eliminated many ethical concerns for this type of related research activities," Gendelman said. Could it help people with the disease? "Obviously mouse studies are mouse studies, so the final tests...need to be clinical trials conducted in humans," Gendelman said. "Until that is done, there is not yet a definitive answer." SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA Early Edition 2004. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn