Question: Even if you were to find out why the cells in the brain died, surely it would still be very difficult to use this information practically on humans as a wrong finding could result in death.

Amy Reeve answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Hi,

This is a good point. But if we can identify what goes wrong in these cells to make them die then all our efforts would be to prevent this happening. Any treatments we would use would be unlikely to cause cell death, but occasionally the cells response to these treatments could be suprising! it is really important therefore that we test any treatments in mice or on cultured cells before they get anywhere near a human!

One other thing to bear in mind is that even when we understand what makes cells die we need to find a way to detect this cell death at a very early stage. By the time a person with Parkinson’s disease gets symptoms, 70% of the brain cells in the region we are interested in are already dead. How effective would a treatment be at this stage? We would also therefore need a way to detect cell death when it is 10% of the cells that have died rather than 70%!

The information we get from studying what causes these diseases is still invaluable though. For example the mitochondria (which i study) are broken down in the cell when they are no longer working properly. So if it is the faulty mitochondria which cause cell death then we might be able to get the cells to degrade all the faulty mitochondria and make new functional ones themselves. this might then save the cell from death. But you need to cover all bases and make sure that by doing this you are not having a detrimental effect elsewhere!

Hope this helps!