Replacing Nerves Damaged by Parkinson’s Disease

“Tremor“.
(credit: webmd.com)

Parkinson’s Disease affects one’s nervous system through its progressive degeneration. Consequentially, an individual’s motor skills depreciate in their operation over time. There’s no “cure” for Parkinson’s Disease, but a recent publication in the journal Cell Stem Cell shares that “stem cells may provide a new way of regrowing the motor neurons affected by the movement disorder” (TIME).

Credit: webmd.com

What exactly does this mean? Well, the human body’s fetal motor nerves are not unlike its motor nerves (a.k.a. the nerves that degenerate due to Parkinson’s). That means “stem cells may become an important source of new nerves to replace the ones damaged in diseases like Parkinson’s.”

“He could hardly sign his name,” says Janice Lueken, the wife of a man named Joe, who was ultimately diagnosed with Parkinson’s about 16 years ago, even though he didn’t much notice the disease’s initial signs (in this case, occasional tremors). “I didn’t think anything of it,” he says, “but it got to me more and more.” Thanks to the incredible surgical efforts of the Mayo Clinic team, he has been able to improve his state. “It was wonderful,” recalls Dr. Fogelson, who performed the surgery, “I touched on the nerves that were there for this…We were all excited in the O.R. We were giving high-fives.”

“He could hardly sign his name,” says Janice Lueken, the wife of a man named Joe, who was ultimately diagnosed with Parkinson’s about 16 years ago…

Credit: webmd.com

Malin Parmar, associate professor of regenerative neurobiology at Lund University, has been pioneering this stem cell research that could potentially help those whose nerves are becoming increasingly damaged. She “took human embryonic stem cells extracted from excess IVF embryos and treated them to develop into motor neurons.” Then, she transplanted them “into the brains of rats bred to develop Parkinson’s and found that the lab-made cells brought dopamine levels in these animals back to normal levels in five months. The nerves sent out long extensions to connect with other nerve cells in the brain—such networks are important to ensuring coordinated and regulated muscle movements, and without them, patients experience uncontrollable tremors. The effects were similar to those seen when fetal nerves are transplanted into Parkinson’s patients, a treatment currently used to help alleviate symptoms in some patients.”

The question now is, how much can humans expect to have a similarly strong effect?

Read more about the findings here and check out more Science of Us posts here.