Imaging method reveals Parkinson's heart damage, a possible treatment

July 16 (UPI) – Researchers have found a possible treatment for heart damage caused by Parkinson's disease, after finding that an imaging method could reveal and allow the # 1 39, evaluation of the treatment.

A way to track the mechanisms that cause nerve damage to nerve cells has been tested on the human nervous system and heart resembling rhesus macaque monkeys. The results were published Friday in the journal npj Parkinson's disease.

About 60 percent of patients with Parkinson's disease already have serious damage to the heart's connections to the sympathetic nervous system, the researchers said. Dr. Marina Emborg, a professor of medical physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a researcher on Parkinson's disease at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, said in a press that patients' bodies are less prepared to respond to the disease. stress and simple changes.Liberation. "They increased the risk of fatigue, fainting and falling which can cause injury and complicate other symptoms of the disease."

For the study, the researchers gave 10 rhesus macaque monkeys doses of a neurotoxin that damaged the nerves in their hearts, Before and after the test, the monkeys underwent a positron emission tomography, or PET, to follow the processes chemicals in the body with the aid of radioactive tracers.

"We know that there is damage in the heart of Parkinson, but we have not been able to see exactly what causes it, "said the l & # 39; lead author Jeanette Metzger, a graduate student. "Now we can visualize in detail where inflammation and oxidative stress occur in the heart, and how it relates to how Parkinson's patients lose those neuronal connections in the heart."

Three tracers, called radioligands, mapped three things in the left ventricle, which is the strongest pumping chamber: where the nerves extend into the heart muscle have been damaged, where the heart tissue has known the more inflammation and where the most oxidative stress existed.

The researchers said that radioligands can also be used new treatments to protect neurons that regulate cardiac activity.

Half of the monkeys received pioglitazone, which has shown promise to protect central nervous system cells from inflammation and oxidative stress. Pioglitazone, with the brand name Actos, has been prescribed to treat diabetes.

"Recovery of nerve function is much greater in animals treated with pioglitazone," said Emborg. "And what's interesting is this method allows us to very accurately identify the differences that the treatment makes – separately for inflammation and oxidative stress – across the heart."

Metzger believes that humans could benefit from radioligands before others "Much of the neural degeneration that occurs in the heart can occur very early in the course of the disease," Metzger said. "Many patients have heart problems before they have any motor problems. While these PET techniques can potentially test drugs, they can also be used as tools to understand the mechanisms that underlie early lesions. cardiac nerve. "

The researchers also believe that other disorders with nerve damage in the heart – including heart attacks and diabetes – could benefit from the new method.