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Friday February 27, 1998 German researchers find 2nd Parkinson's gene WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - German researchers said on Friday they had found a second gene linked with Parkinson's disease, a serious and incurable brain illness. Studies of three families with members suffering from Parkinson's showed a similar mutation on chromosome 2p, Dr. Thomas Gasser of the Neurologische Klinik at Klinikum Grosshader in Munich and colleagues said. They did not name the gene but said it was different from another gene linked with Parkinson's. "We describe a different genetic locus that appears to be involved in the development of parkinsonism closely resembling sporadic (non-familial) parkinsonism including a similar mean age of onset (59 years)," they wrote in a letter to the journal Nature Genetics. Gasser's team did checks on three families of European origin who had at least four members with Parkinson's. They did broad genetic scans and found all had similar variations in the same area of the 2p chromosome. Last year Dr. Robert Nussbaum of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues found the first gene linked with familial Parkinson's. Parkinson's disease (PD), a chronic and progressive neurodegenerative disorder, ... <snip> Copyright © 1998 Reuters Limited. Judith Richards [log in to unmask]