New Technology Targets Parkinson’s Disease Origin

By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 14, 2010

UK researchers plan to use new stem cell technology to grow brain cells thought to be associated
with Parkinson’s disease from skin samples. Dr Richard Wade-

Martins, head of the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre, will be gathering data from over 1,000
patients with early stage Parkinson’s disease and taking small samples of skin tissue to grow
special stem cells —induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). iPS cells can be generated from
accessible tissue such as the skin and then used to generate specific types of cell. The researchers
will use the iPS cells to grow dopamine neurons – the brain cells responsible for the production
of dopamine, as it is these cells which die in patients with Parkinson’s, leading to the onset of the
disease.

Dr Wade-Martins explains: ―Parkinson’s disease is the second most common

neurodegenerative disease in the UK and is set to become increasingly common as we live
longer. iPS cells provide new and exciting opportunities to grow and study dopamine neurons
from patients for the first time.

―This technology will prove to be extremely important in diseases which affect the brain
because of its relative inaccessibility —it’s far easier to get a skin sample than a brain biopsy.

―Once we have neurons from patients we can compare the functioning of cells taken from
patients with the disease and those without to better understand why dopamine neurons die in
patients with Parkinson’s.

Over the next five years, the researchers funded by the charity Parkinson’s UK, will combine
their stem cell work with the latest techniques in molecular genetics, protein science and brain
imaging to develop ways of detecting the early development of Parkinson’s disease in
individuals before symptoms arrive.

The £5 million Monument Discovery Award given to Dr Wade-Martins and his team is the
largest grant ever awarded by Parkinson’s UK.

Dr Kieran Breen, Parkinson’s UK Director of Research said: ―We are passionate about finding
a cure for Parkinson’s. This is vital research that will help us better understand the causes of this
devastating condition and how it develops and progresses.

―We hope the work will pave the way for new and better treatments for people with Parkinson’s
in the future.
Source: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

Obesity Increases Memory Decline in Older Women

By Rick Nauert PhD, July 13, 2010 New research presents another argument for controlling
weight as one ages. Northwestern University scientists discovered the more an older woman
weighs, the worse her memory. According to researchers the effect is more pronounced in
women who carry excess weight around their hips, known as pear shapes, than women who carry
it around their waists, called apple shapes.

The study of 8,745 cognitively normal, postmenopausal women ages 65 to 79 from the Women’s
Health

Initiative hormone trials is the first in the United States to link obesity to poorer memory and
brain function in women and to identify the body-shape connection.

“The message is obesity and a higher body mass index (BMI) are not good for your cognition
and your memory,” said lead author Diana Kerwin, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and
a physician at Northwestern Medicine.

“While the women’s scores were still in the normal range, the added weight definitely had a
detrimental effect.”

For every one-point increase in a woman’s BMI, her memory score dropped by one point. The
women were scored on a 100-point memory test, called the Modified Mini-Mental Status
Examination. The study controlled for such variables as diabetes, heart disease and stroke. The
study will be published July 14 in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. The reason
pear-shaped women experienced more memory and brain function deterioration than apple-
shaped women likely is related to the type of fat deposited around the hips versus the waist.

“Obesity is bad, but its effects are worse depending on where the fat is located,” Kerwin said.

Cytokines, hormones released by the predominant kind of fat in the body that can cause
inflammation, likely affect cognition, Kerwin said. Scientists already know different kinds of fat
release different cytokines and have different effects on insulin resistance, lipids and blood
pressure.

“We need to find out if one kind of fat is more detrimental than the other, and how it affects
brain function,” she said.
“The fat may contribute to the formation of plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease or a
restricted blood flow to the brain.”

In the meantime, the new findings provide guidance to physicians with overweight, older female
patients.

“The study tells us if we have a woman in our office, and we know from her waist-to-hip ratio
that she’s carrying excess fat on her hips, we might be more aggressive with weight loss,”
Kerwin said.

“We can’t change where your fat is located, but having less of it is better.”

Source: Northwestern University

Psychedelic Therapy

Retro Drugs As Modern Medicine?

Baby boomers that experimented with LSD and magic mushrooms in the 60’s and 70’s are now
senior scientists nearing retirement in the FDA and other institutions, and are no longer afraid to
assert their belief that psychedelics have a place in modern medical therapy.

After a break of 20 years research quietly began again in the early 90’s and has been gaining
credibility, current studies involve the treatment of cluster headaches, depression, obsessive-
compulsive disorder (OCD), severe anxiety in terminal cancer patients, post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD), alcoholism and opiate addiction and the FDA has approved clinical trials in the
U.S., Switzerland, Israel and Spain.

Mind-altering psychedelics are back—but this time they are being explored in labs for
their therapeutic applications rather than being used illegally. The past 15 years have seen
a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-
underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies
using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as
LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine. Much remains unclear about the
precise neural mechanisms governing how these drugs produce their mind-bending results, but
they often produce somewhat similar psychoactive effects that make them potential therapeutic
tools. Though still in their preliminary stages, studies in humans suggest that the day when
people can schedule a psychedelic session with their therapist to overcome a serious psychiatric
problem may not be that far off.
Amnesia Causing Drug

New Drug Erases Bad Memories

Everyone’s got something in their past they want to forget, even Paris Hilton. Now there is a
pharmaceutical delete button. Why go through years of therapy or self-medication then rehab,
when you can take a sci-fi wonder pill? Remember Total Recall and Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind?

An amnesia drug that blocks or deletes bad memories is under development by researchers
at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal). The technique seems to allow
psychiatrists to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow a memory to be recalled.In a new
study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the drug propranolol is used along with
therapy to "dampen" memories of trauma victims. They treated 19 accident or rape victims for
ten days, during which the patients were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event
that had happened 10 years earlier. A week later, they found that patients given the drug showed
fewer signs of stress when recalling their trauma.