For some years now researchers have been looking into ways of treating Parkinson's disease by transplanting new cells into the degenerating regions of patients' brains. Until recently however, the technique had been hampered by its emphasis on human embryos and animals as sources of graft cells, both of which raise a plethora of legal, ethical and physiological problems.
But evidence has begun to emerge that transplants which use an individual's own cells could be the safest and least controversial way to alleviate this debilitating neurodegenerative condition. Now José López-Barneo of the University of Seville, Spain and colleagues have built on their successful treatment of rat Parkinsonism, by showing that the same technology also seems to work in monkeys. This is a promising step forward, given the similarities between the brains of humans and other primates. As they have done before in other animals, the researchers took cells from a mass of tissue in the neck known as the 'carotid body'. The carotid body is involved in controlling the oxygen content and acidity of blood. This may seem remote from the concerns of researchers interested in replacing lost brain cells. However, it turns out that cells in the carotid body, like many cells in the head and brain, have similar embryonic origins. They are also rich in dopamine, the brain's own opium-like substance. A point of particularly importance given that Parkinsonism is directly related to the death of the brain's dopamine-producing cells.
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