Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 10/06/2014 16:58:46
-
Foetal nerve grafts persist in Parkinson's patients for decades...
Read a transcript of the interview by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1000742/)
or [chapter podcast=1000702 track=14.06.10/Naked_Scientists_Show_14.06.10_1002360.mp3](https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenakedscientists.com%2FHTML%2Ftypo3conf%2Fext%2Fnaksci_podcast%2Fgnome-settings-sound.gif&hash=f2b0d108dc173aeaa367f8db2e2171bd) Listen to it now[/chapter] or [download as MP3] (http://nakeddiscovery.com/downloads/split_individual/14.06.10/Naked_Scientists_Show_14.06.10_1002360.mp3)
-
One aspect that I think may have been glossed over in the podcast:
- It was mentioned that transplanted dopamine-producing cells were able to persist in the body for up to 15 years, without succumbing to whatever-it-is that caused the Parkinsons patients' own dopamine-producing cells to die.
- It was then suggested that dopamine-producing cells derived from the patient's own skin cells would be able to survive for a similar period of time in the brain.
This hypothesis assumes that the mysterious death of the dopamine-producing cells is not genetic. If it is genetic, then skin cells would be likely to carry the same mutation, and might suffer the same premature death (although they might give the patient more years before succumbing once more).
Unfortunately, I have seen widely varying estimates of the heritability of Parkinsons, ranging from 4% (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197458011000467) to as high as 60% (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2947819/).