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It is my understanding that over many years of use, lithium actually causes parkinson's like symptoms and other nasty side effects. Certainly I have seen this first hand. It is also on the list of drugs (Our Australian list, anyway) which have the potential to worsen pd symptoms. So don't even give it a thought....unless you need it for bipolar illness (and even then there may be better alternatives.) Joy GRAHAM >At 11:27 PM 3/3/98 EST, Ken wrote: >>Maybe, if not for the lithium, his PD might have been worse, or started >>sooner, or maybe the dose of lithium is not suffiicient to help the PD? Just >>a couple of wild guesses.... > >As has been pointed out many times, PD is a designer disease. Each PWP has >a unique response to drugs, whether dosage, type, frequency, side effects, >efficacy, or whatever. As we have seen, what works for one PWP may have no >effect or an opposite effect on another PWP. There are people for whom >Prozac is a depressant or Penicillin is a poison. Anything that affects >the neurotransmitters can affect each PWP uniquely. The effect will depend >not only on the drug, but on the medical history of the patient. Lithium >may help (none)(few)(some)(many)(all) PWP. The purpose of the referenced >study is to establish error bars (how much lithium, how many PWP) for >lithium's impact on PD. > >Peace, John