Yesterday, Dr. Langston was awarded the Donald Calne Lectureship and gave a public lecture on the Aetiology of Parkinson's disease. He reviewed the literature showing that for the overwhelming majority of cases, we are looking at exposure to environmental toxins as the initial insult.He closed his talk by saying, "Genes load the gun. But environment pulls the trigger." I always enjoy hearing from the Big Names on how discoveries were made, the story of the discovery of MPTP being one example. A bad batch of synthetic heroin was made - in "The Case of the Frozen Addict," Langston describes how young men started showing signs of parkinsonism. Interestingly enough, however, this discovery led to the first good animal model of PD, and the MPP+ model is still used today.
Check out "The fight against Parkinson's disease" at http://www.cbc.ca/wildrosecountry/ to hear an interview with Dr. Langston.
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