PARKINSON'S-AFFLICTED MICE INJECTED WITH SPEED GOT BETTER

SAN FRANCISCO -- Illegal drugs such as Ecstasy and related amphetamines
reversed the Parkinson's diseaselike muscle rigidity in mice, researchers
reported Monday.

While cautioning such a surprising finding in mice doesn't translate
directly to patients, the scientists said the research opens up new areas
of exploration for an incurable brain disorder that afflicts 500,000 people
in the United States.

"We hope that our study doesn't prompt all the Parkinsonians to go out to
the street corners to deal for methamphetamine and Ecstasy," said Marc
Caron, a Duke University Medical Center researcher in Durham, N.C., and
co-author of the study.

Caron and his colleagues created mice through genetic engineering and drugs
to be free of the brain chemical dopamine. Without dopamine, the rodents
became rigid like Parkinson's patients.

The researchers then injected the mice with about 60 different chemical
compounds, that are widely abused like Ecstasy and several others from the
amphetamine family.

The mice receiving the speed showed dramatic results.

"These mice were frozen completely," said Duke researcher Raul Gainetdinov,
another of the report's authors. "When we treated them and put them in
water, they were able to swim."

The study is being published in the Public Library of Science's journal
Biology, which is available free online. It was funded by a National
Institutes of Health grant.

The paper suggests that amphetamines, especially when used with the one
approved treatment that slows the effects of Parkinson's, helped make
dopamine in the genetically engineered mice. Parkinson's patients lose
brain cells that create dopamine, a chemical vital for motor function.

Investigating possible medicinal uses of such widely abused drugs like
Ecstasy, an amphetamine derivative, is a highly contentious area of research.

Some research suggests that amphetamines - especially methamphetamine -
damage brain cells when abused while other scientific reports are
uncovering promising areas for therapeutic use of Ecstasy.

One high-profile paper published three years ago in the journal Science
that showed Ecstasy killed dopamine-producing brain cells was later
retracted when the researchers said they mistakenly used methamphetamine in
their research.

Those results still showed methamphetamine to be toxic.

Caron said that amphetamine abuse is dangerous and unhealthy, but
overshadows the possible medicinal benefits the drugs may have. Children
have been given two forms of speed for years to combat attention deficit
disorders while the brain naturally creates amphetaminelike chemicals, he said.

Meanwhile, two human experiments exploring Ecstasy's use as a psychotherapy
drug to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome and terminal cancer patients
are currently underway.

Parkinson's experts not affiliated with the Duke research team tempered
their enthusiasm for a paper they found intriguing but incomplete.

Dr. William Langston, chief executive of the Sunnyvale-based Parkinson's
Institute, said the paper could open up a new field of exploration in a
so-far frustrating research area for scientists.

"The excitement is that they could be onto something quite novel," said
Langston, who is also a board member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for
Parkinson's Research.

Still, he cautioned that the mice in the experiment didn't get the
Parkinson's recognizable in people.

Others warned about reading too much into the research.

"There may be a more simple explanation than a dopamine-independent effect
of amphetamines," said Dave Sulzer, a Parkinson's researcher at Columbia
University Medical Center.

Sulzer said among other possible explanations not explored by the Duke team
is that the amphetamines interfered with the drug used to block dopamine
production in the mice.

He also noted that the researchers didn't test the amphetamines and
dopamine inhibitors on naturally produced mice with normal dopamine levels
for comparison's sake.

"It's a good paper," Sulzer said. "But it's really premature" to begin
testing amphetamines on Parkinson's patients. Sulzer also noted that the
amphetamines given to each mouse were excessively high.

"You would never give patients this amount," he said.