WASHINGTON, DC June 27, 2007 -- Exposure to iron during the first weeks of life in combination with exposure later in life to a common herbicide may contribute to the subsequent degeneration of brain cells associated with the onset of Parkinsons disease (PD), according to a new study in mice. The findings also showed that a compound that protects cells in the body from damage from certain forms of oxygen, a kind of antioxidant, could suppress such neural degeneration.

Previous studies indicated that both early exposure to iron and later exposure to the herbicide paraquat independently increase oxidative stressan environment in which damage from levels of reactive oxygen is more likelyin dopamine-producing regions of the brain, areas that are affected by PD. Julie Andersen, PhD, and her team at the Buck Institute for Age Research found that feeding iron to newborn mice made them more susceptible to paraquat, which increases levels of harmful forms of oxygen and damages dopamine-producing neurons as they grew older. The study appears in the June 27 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

The importance of the study is that it points to a possible role of common mechanisms triggered by iron and paraquat as important in PD, and suggests that therapies that block their effects would be worth testing in patients, says Marie-Francoise Chesselet, MD, PhD, of UCLA, who did not participate in the study.

Ten-day-old mice were fed iron for a week. At ages from two months to two years, they were then exposed to paraquat for three weeks. By examining their brains, Andersen and her team found that by the time the mice were a year old, early iron consumption exacerbated damage to brain cells caused by paraquat exposure. The effect was even more pronounced at two years of age, the human equivalent of 6070 years.

A subset of mice that received the antioxidant at the same time that they were exposed to paraquat exhibited reduced leve
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Contact: Sara Harris
sharris@sfn.org
202-962-4000
Society for Neuroscience
27-Jun-2007