The results raise the hope that urate, or a nutritional supplement called inosine that is converted to urate in the body, might slow the disabling symptoms of Parkinson's, a brain disease that affects more than 1 million people in the USA. Right now, drugs for Parkinson's treat the symptoms but do nothing to slow the progression of the devastating disease, says one study author, Alberto Ascherio of the Harvard School of Public Health.
Previous research had noted that healthy people with high blood levels of urate had a reduced risk of developing Parkinson's later in life. To expand on that research, Ascherio, Michael Schwarzschild of the Massachusetts General Hospital and their colleagues studied 800 people with mild Parkinson's. They looked at blood levels of urate naturally present in the blood and the rate of disease progression over a two-year period.
The team did a statistical analysis and discovered that people with the highest levels of urate had about half the risk of getting significantly worse. At the end of the study, these people still did not require treatment with drugs that replace dopamine, a brain chemical that helps regulate movement.
Parkinson's occurs when brain cells that produce dopamine are slowly destroyed. The symptoms of the disease worsen as time goes on and more of these brain cells die, Ascherio says.
Meanwhile, patients shouldn't rush out to get inosine, which is widely available, because there is no proof that the supplement works.
