Parkinson'Sanother Look

For Those Of Us That Have Recently Seen Michael J. Fox On Television, It Has Forced Us To Take A Look At Parkinsons Disease And The Debilitating Effects That It Has On A Person. Dr. Lawrence Broxmeyers New Book Takes Another Look At What May Be The Cause Of Parkinsons Disease.Recent Studies In The Parkinsons Disease Literature Have Cited A Tuberculosislike Germ Called Nocardia As Being Responsible For Parkinsons Of Unknown Cause (Kohbata And Shimokawa, 1993) (Beaman, Beaman And Kjelstrom, 1994) (Kohbata And Beaman, 1991). Kohbata Seemingly Cemented A Relationship Between Nocardia And Parkinsons By Finding Serologic Evidence In 20 Of 20 Parkinsons Patients. With This Finding, Kohbata Acknowledged That Blood Tests For Nocardia And The Mycobacteria Such As Tuberculosis Often Crossreact, As They Belong To The Same Order Of Bacteria, The Actinomycetales. Besides This Difficulty In Differentiation, A Well Used Medical School Textbook Of Microbiology Points Out That Even Among Experts, Different Observers May Classify The Same Strain Of Bacteria As Nocardia Or Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (Atlas, 1988). To Add To Existing Difficulties, Both Microorganisms Can Be Acidfast, Retaining A Characteristic Reddish Color After Being Washed With Acid Alcohol, A Common Laboratory Reagent. Such A Staining Characteristic Has Long Been Used To Identify Mycobacterium Tuberculosis.Burn Of Yale University Identified A Grampositive Bacillus From The Bloodstream Of Three Infants That Had Died From Parkinsons Causing Von Economos Encephalitis (Burn, 1934). This Pathogen Bore An Eerie Resemblance To A Microbe Which Was A Cross Between The Mycobacteria And Nocardia, The Acidfast Forms Of Which Jackson (1954) Of Cornell Found In A Variety Of Degenerative Diseases Including Wilsons Disease, A Primary Cause Of Parkinsons In The Young. Moreover, The Important Parkinsons Datatop Study (1996) Unwittingly Settled Upon An Agent Originally Designed To Cure Tuberculosis, The Mao Inhibitor Called Deprenyl. And Recently Fuenteaguado And Bordon (1996), Kurasawa Ikeda And Inoue, 1997), Otaki (1994) And Earlier, Mital, Sarkari And Singh (1974) And Solanki And Kothari, (1977) All Cured Symptomatic Parkinsons Using Antituberculous Medications.Parkinsons And Tuberculosis Share Many Common Threads; Both Came Into Force And Were Linked With The Great Industrial Revolution. The Substantia Nigra Was Established As Important To Parkinsons Through A Tuberculous Attack On An Autopsied Patient. (Blocq And Marinesco, 1893). Both Diseases Share A Common Preferential Site Of Attack, The Convexity Of The Brain. Parkinsons Last Great Epidemic, Von Economos Encephalitis, Was, According To Hall (1924), Almost Indistinguishable From Tuberculosis. Even In Aids, Often Associated With Parkinsons, Mycobacteria, Such As Tuberculosis, Have Been Reported As The Most Common Central Nervous System Pathogens In Hivinfected People (Berenguer And Moreno, 1992). Furthermore, Many Of The Patients With Either Parkinsons Or Tuberculosis Share The Common Denominator Of A Chronic Wasting Disease, A Cachexic Eating Away Of The Flesh; Both Are Primarily Diseases Of Older People With A Slight Male Preference.We Live In An Age Where Science And Medicine Are Encouraged To Apply New Technology Towards Older Afflictions And Thus The Rush To Surgical And Stemcell Correction Of Parkinsons. However, Here As Elsewhere The Roots Of The Present Often Lie Deep And Securely Buried In The Past. Let Us Now Take A Moment To Uncover That Past.