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under which this article appears:Parkinson's disease |
BMJ 2000;321:1175 ( 11 November )
Abi Berger, BMJ
A commonly used organic pesticide called rotenone has been linked with
Parkinson's disease. The cause of most cases of the disease is unknown, but
epidemiological studies have suggested that chronic exposure to environmental
toxins
such as pesticidesmay be responsible for the
degeneration of neurons containing dopamine. Now Dr Tim Greenmyre and his
colleagues at the department of neurology at Emory University in Atlanta have
shown that rotenone, administered intravenously over several weeks, reproduces
the major features of Parkinson's disease in rats (Nature Neuroscience
2000;3:1301-6).
Postmortem studies suggest that the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease is initiated by damage to the mitochondria. Previously the best animal model for Parkinson's disease was the "MPTP model," where mice or monkeys are treated with a drug called 1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) and the features of Parkinson's disease are faithfully reproduced. The toxicity of MPTP occurs because its derivative MPP+ inhibits one of the mitochondrial enzymes. The team decided to test rotenone because it is known to inhibit the same mitochondrial enzyme as MPP+. This study does not prove that rotenone causes Parkinson's disease in humans, but it does support the hypothesis that exposure to pesticides may contribute to the brain damage seen in the disease.
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