Plant protection products as a trigger of Parkinson's disease

Pesticide in pesticides identified as a trigger of Parkinson's

04/12/2012

Researchers have long suspected additional external environmental factors and factors that significantly increase the risk of Parkinson's disease. Scientists of the Department of Neurology headed by Prof. Heinz Reichmann of the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus and the Institute of Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden have found out from an in-depth research that a special pesticide for pest control in agriculture contributes significantly to the development of Parkinson's disease and can amplify existing complaints from patients. Although the verifiable results were obtained in animal experiments, a transfer to humans is conceivable.

Neurologists and physicians have decrypted the insecticide rotenone as causal. According to the results of the research, this can trigger symptoms of Parkinson's disease and additionally increase them. Here, "nerve connections between the intestine and brain play an essential role," as the scientists write in the study report in the "Nature Scientific Reports".

Parkinson's progress is slow and steady
Around three percent of people in Germany suffer from Parkinson's disease. Above average, people with advanced age are affected by the degenerative disease. Parkinson's progress is slow and makes his appearance externally by trembling hands, rigid muscles, an almost mask-like expression and muscle tremors (medical: tremor) noticeable. Shaking and often even shaking hands are the main symptom of neurological disease. The muscle tremor is caused by the death of nerve cells in individual regions of the middle brain (Substantia nigra). As a result, sufferers suffer from a lack of dopamine, which is why patients are given dopamine as a therapeutic drug.

Frequently involved in agriculture people
Older studies have repeatedly pointed to the striking fact that people who work in agriculture are more likely to develop Parkinson's disease. It is precisely this knowledge that has led medical scientists to suppose that external environmental factors play an important role in the development of the disease. Obviously, pesticides were responsible for this. For this reason, the researchers studied the effects and mechanisms of pesticides all the more intense. The researchers finally came across the pesticide rotenone in the studies.

In some states, the active ingredient Ronoton is approved as an insecticide. As the study showed, the substance causes "nerve cells in the intestinal tract to release the protein alpha-synuclein". This protein is subsequently taken up by the nerve endings of nerve cells in the brain and transported further to the cell body. In these cell bodies, alpha-synuclein deposits and ensures cell destruction. In the experiment with mice, the researchers cut through the special nerves in the gut that connect the digestive tract and the brain. After the nerves were severed, the process described no longer took place. Thus, the named proteins "could no longer reach the neurons of the midbrain and the similar symptoms of Parkinson's disease were greatly reduced", as the researchers write in a message.

So far, this relationship could only be observed in mice. It is to be assumed, however, that this would be similar in humans. "If this is also confirmed in Parkinson's patients, then we have taken an important step to develop new approaches to early diagnosis and treatment strategies against the disease in the future," said the study director Francisco Pan-Montojo from the Dresden Institute of Anatomy. Further studies will follow on this topic. (Sb)

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Picture: siepmannH