Anti-Inflammatories Ward Off Parkinson's -Study

[John Cottingham <jcott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The source of this article is the Pakistan Tribune: http://tinyurl.com/6x4ng

Anti-Inflammatories Ward Off Parkinson's -Study

ISLAMABAD, Dec 26 (Online): Regular use of anti-inflammatory drugs appears to 
lower the risk of developing Parkinson's disease, perhaps by protecting brain 
cells that would otherwise die, researchers said.

The risk of Parkinson's was reduced by about 45 percent among adults who 
regularly took drugs known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) 
compared to non-users, the Harvard School of Public Health study said. These 
drugs include ibuprofen, indomethacin and naproxen which can carry their own 
risks from long-term use such as liver damage. Those who took two or more 
aspirin daily also got the protective effect from Parkinson\'s, which afflicts 
an estimated 1.5 million Americans, mostly older than 50.

"The results of postmortem studies suggest that inflammation is involved in the 
development of Parkinson's disease and there is experimental evidence that 
NSAIDs are protective for the cells that are selectively destroyed," said study 
author Dr. Honglei Chen of Harvard. It was not known if taking NSAIDs can 
benefit people who already have Parkinson's, but the drugs have previously been 
found to have a protective benefit against Alzheimer's disease, Chen said. The 
causes of the two neurological diseases, which commonly strike the elderly, are 
unknown.

The study, which was published in The Archives of Neurology journal, employed 
data from two studies involving health workers a 14-year study of 44,000 men 
ending in 1990, and an 18-year nurses study with 98,000 women ending in 1998. 
Six percent of the men and 4 percent of the women regularly used NSAIDs. A 
total of 415 cases of Parkinson's disease were diagnosed. In an accompanying 
editorial, Dr. Mya Schiess of the University of Texas suggested that 
refinements in the study's findings may lead to possible treatments of 
Parkinson's. Another report in the same journal projected that the number of 
Americans afflicted with Alzheimer's disease will triple to 13.2 million by the 
year 2050 from 4.5 million in 2000, based on an analysis of census data and 
disease patterns.

The expanding population of those older than 85 are particularly at risk for 
the mind-robbing disease. "These estimates ... assume that the age-, race-, and 
education-specific risk of the disease will remain constant over the next 50 
years. The large public health challenge is to make these projections obsolete 
and irrelevant by discovering routes to the prevention of the illness," wrote 
study author Denis Evans of Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in 
Chicago.

End.

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