 |
 |
--Boundary (ID nMWOo0pnOkR1hJU8VHhnfg) Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Hi, I am a new subscriber and would like to introduce myself. My name is Freya Kamel. I am an epidemiologist working at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Durham, NC. I am studying the causes of neurodegenerative diseases, particularly the potential role played by environmental toxins. My present work concerns Lou Gehrig's disease, but I am also interested in other diseases, including Parkinson's disease. I have joined this list because my father has Parkinson's disease. Some people have mentioned trials of nicotine in PD. I don't know if this is the trial they had in mind, but here is a reference to a recent article: Clemens, P.; Baron, J. A.; Coffey, D.; Reeves, A. The short-term effect of nicotine chewing gum in patients with Parkinson's disease. Psychopharmacology. 1995 Jan; 117: 253-256. Because of the inverse association of cigarette smoking with the risk of Parkinson's disease, we performed a short-term, double-blind, randomized controlled trial of nicotine polacrilex resin gum in patients with this disease. Forty-eight subjects were randomly assigned to chew either nicotine gum or placebo gum three times at 2- h intervals, with evaluation of symptoms before and after the trial. The nicotine gum was reasonably well tolerated, but there were no substantial differences in Parkinson's disease symptoms between the two treatment groups. Although many articles have been published showing an inverse association between smoking and PD, the issue is complex, and the results may be an artifact. If anyone is interested I can post a list of references on the subject. Thank you all for your input. Freya Kamel [log in to unmask] --Boundary (ID nMWOo0pnOkR1hJU8VHhnfg)--