Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in the United Kingdom have discovered that a drug typically used to treat people with diabetes can potentially offer relief from Parkinson's disease as well.
People who regularly take anti-diabetes pills known as glitazones were found to be less susceptible to developing Parkinson's disease compared to diabetics who take other drugs for their condition.
The LSHTM researchers, however, warn that glitazone pills have been found to have dangerous side effects. They caution people from giving the diabetes drugs to healthy individuals.
In a study published in the journal Plos Medicine, lead researcher Dr. Ian Douglas and his colleagues examined electronic health records collected from people in the UK. They compared data from 44,597 individuals that were prescribed to take glitazone pills with 120,373 patients taking other treatments for diabetes.
The researchers paired the participants to make sure that age and their diabetes treatment stage were identical.
Douglas and his team found that participants who belonged to the glitazone group were less likely to develop Parkinson's disease, but the glitazone pills did not provide long-term benefits to the patients. Any protection that the diabetes drug could have potentially given the patients disappeared as soon as started to take a different medication.
"We often hear about negative side-effects associated with medications, but sometimes there can also be unintended beneficial effects," Douglas said.
"Our findings provide unique evidence that we hope will drive further investigation into potential drug treatments for Parkinson's disease."
Douglas explained that such treatments would be more beneficial if they were given to the patient during the initial stages of Parkinson's disease when there is only minimal damage to the nerves.
The potential connection between serious bladder and heart ailments and glitazone medications, however, has led scientists to caution individuals from taking the diabetes drugs, especially if they are healthy.
Parkinson's UK representative Dr. Arthur Roach said that the findings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine research hopefully would lead to further studies regarding the development of treatments that could have the same benefits to diabetics as glitazone pills but still have the potential to reduce the likelihood of an individual from developing Parkinson's disease.
Photo: Jill Brown | Flickr
