One of my sons sent me this a little while ago - it's from the San Jose
Mercury. Liz S~~
Posted at 12:45 p.m. PDT Wednesday, April 8,
1998
Japanese doctors find gene tied to
Parkinson's
LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese scientists
identified a gene Wednesday which causes a
rare inherited form of Parkinson's disease
that strikes the young.
Tohru Kitada and researchers at Keio
University School of Medicine in Tokyo tracked
down the gene linked to autosomal recessive
juvenile parkinsonism (AR-JP), a brain
disorder that begins in adolescence and
incapacitates many sufferers by middle age.
``Mutations in the newly identified gene
appear to be responsible for the pathogenesis
(development) of AR-JP, and we have therefore
named the protein product parkin,''
Kitada said in a report in the scientific
journal Nature.
The mutation may also play a part in
Parkinson's disease, a much more common
degenerative brain disease which strikes later
in life and afflicts up to half a million
people in the United States alone.
``Although AR-JP is rare, Kitada et al may
have identified a previously unrecognized
component of what will certainly be a complex
pathogenetic pathway (chain reaction of
genes) leading to Parkinson's disease,''
Robert Nussbaum said in an accompanying
commentary in Nature.
Both Parkinson's disease and AR-JP are
characterized by movement problems, called
parkinsonism, such as tremors, rigidity and
slowness.
Kitada and his team discovered the gene
mutation in several unrelated AR-JP patients
they studied.
