Haven't heard of any link to encephalitis as being a
Parkinson's trigger but I'm not an expert. There
seems to be a slightly higher occurence in Farmers
which is suspected to be herbacide/pesticide related
but not by any means proven. Only one group of
Farmers in a small area in Canada had a statistically
more significant occurence of the disease and it was a
very marked spike in occurence. They believe they've
traced that outbreak to an experimental pesticide that
underwent testing in the area. Needless to say the
pesticide never reached the market. There is also a
slightly elevated occurence in people who drink well
water. If you are on a well, might want to get a
reverse osmosis filter or drink bottle watered. Once
again this is only a slight elevation in the number
and age of onset of the disease. You don't need to
lay awake at night wondering when you are going to get
the disease.
The designer drug wannabe that was the first direct
causative factor of Parkinsons is called MPTP. MPTP
is also a close chemical cousin of the pesticide that
caused the outbreak in Canada. It's a close relative
to the designer drug that the guy was trying to
replicate in his basement lab. Don't know whether he
cooked the batch too long or made other errors but he
and a few of his friends are paying for it, the rest
of their lives. Dopamine is manufactured in an area
of the brain called the substantia nigra (sp). MPTP
attacks that area and permanently stops the production
of dopamine. That gives the sufferer the rigid form
of the disease, otherwise, they are frozen like a
board. AFIK, the drugs used to treat Parkinsons
stimulate an under funtioning Substantia Nigra to
produce Dopamine. These poor people destroyed the SN
so there are no therapies that would/did work for
them. Kind of like having the endstage of the disease
instantly.
The above occurence is why it's so scary that all
these kids are taking these designer drugs. They'll
pop anything into their mouths for a short term high.
Some smuck of a chemist, in a back yard, screws up
just a little and we could have hundres of thousands
of cases of endstage Parkinsons, right now. This is
really scary as Al Qaeda would just have to flood the
country with a Escstasy wannabe and a whole bunch of
kids lives would be over.
I'll ask my dad if there is a good website for
questions about Parkinsons. Probably would be a much
better source than me for information.
Aloha
Peter O.
--- "Tackley, John" <jtackley@dit.state.va.us> wrote:
>
> Peter,
>
> Isn't there also a link to anyone who has had
> encephilitis(sp), as a group likely to develop PD in
> later life?
>
> JT/ric
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Peter said:
> The disease has cluster occurences in certain
> professions. Medical personel are one group that
> has
> a higher than average occurence. It's normally
> thought of as a disease of the elderly with normal
> onset after 60 years of age. Unfortunately, it has
> occured in teenagers and seems to be occuring at
> increasingly younger ages. Michael J. Fox is one of
> those with a particularly young age of onset.
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