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I found an article in the March 14, 1998 issue of Science News which interested me. It can be found at: Science News Online - The Weekly Newsmagazine of Science http://www.sciencenews.org/ Stimulating clue hints how lithium works (excerpts from article) by J. Travis lithium is given to relieve manic-depressive symptoms. how it works is a mystery. De-Maw Chuang and his colleagues have found that lithium protects brain cells from being stimulated to death by glutamate, one of the many chemicals that transmit messages in the brain. The new data suggest that lithium may calm overexcited areas of the brain or, more provocatively, preserve the life of brain cells whose presence guards against manic depression. rat brain cells soaked in lithium for about a week committed suicide much more rarely when exposed to glutamate, Chuang's group reports in the March 3 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In people with manic depression, lithium may correct a dysfunction of the NMDA receptor by limiting calcium influx, speculates Chuang. Both Chuang and Husseini K. Manji also note that a small body of evidence suggests that people with mania or depression may lose brain cells. Lithium may thwart that cell death, they say. Indeed, Manji has some evidence that lithium-treated cells eventually begin to overproduce a protein that stymies the cell's internal suicide program. If lithium protects brain cells from death by glutamate overstimulation, it may have uses beyond manic depression. This form of cell death occurs in strokes and in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases. Chuang is investigating whether lithium protects mice from similar neurodegenerative illnesses. Ronald Vetter 1936, dz PD 1984, carbidopa/levodopa, Mirapex, selegiline [log in to unmask] Ridgecrest, California http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~rfvetter