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Gene therapy treatment for Parkinson's is positive
Its safety was the focus of a small study. Much is unknown.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 22, 2007
NEW YORK - An experimental treatment for Parkinson's disease seemed to improve symptoms without causing side effects in an early study of a dozen patients. The gene therapy treatment involved slipping billions of copies of a gene into the brain to calm overactive brain circuitry. The small study focused on testing the safety of the procedure rather than its effectiveness, and experts cautioned it's too soon to draw conclusions about how well it works. But they called the results promising and said the approach merits further studies. "We still have quite a bit more testing to do, " said Dr. Michael Kaplitt of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, an author of the study. Still, "the initial results are extremely encouraging." He and collaborators report the results in this week's issue of the British medical journal the Lancet. They're not alone in trying gene therapy for Parkinson's. In April, another team told a medical meeting that its experiments, which delivered a different kind of gene to a different part of the brain, also appeared safe and gave a preliminary hint of benefit. More than half a million Americans have Parkinson's.
[Last modified June 22, 2007, 01:21:41]
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