Potential for exercise to slow Parkinson's progression

23 October 2009

New results presented at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Chicago this week point towards the profound effects that exercise may have on the brain.

In studies conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh in the US, exercise is able to protect the brains of monkeys against chemicals that researchers usually use to mimic Parkinson's.

Testing exercise for Parkinson's

Over a period of 3 months, monkeys were divided into groups that either ran, jogged or sat on a treadmill for an hour every day, 5 days a week.

After this training period, all the monkeys were given MPTP, a chemical which attacks the nerve cells that are lost in Parkinson's. These nerve cells produce dopamine, a chemical messenger that helps regulate movements.

The MPTP successfully killed dopamine-producing nerve cells in the monkeys that sat still. They developed a slowness of movement that is typical of Parkinson's.

But in the brains of monkeys that had been running, MPTP had almost no effect. Their dopamine-producing nerve cells survived and the monkeys were protected from the Parkinson's symptoms that normally occur. Even after another 6 weeks, brain scans showed that exercising animals had virtually normal levels of dopamine in their brains.

What does this mean?

Dr Kieran Breen, Director of Research and Development at the Parkinson's Disease Society, comments:

"These new studies provide tantalising glimpses of the potential exercise has to slow the progression of Parkinson's – something no current treatment can.

"Now, further studies are crucial to understand exactly how exercise affects the brain, and how we can harness the power of exercise to develop better treatments and therapies for people with Parkinson's."

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