Genetic Link to Parkinson's Is Discovered
By Rick WeissWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006; Page A14
Researchers said yesterday that they have identified a single genetic mutation that accounts for more than 20 percent of all cases of Parkinson's disease in Arabs, North Africans and Jews, a big surprise for a major disease in which genetics was thought to play a relatively minor role.
Although the mutation is rare in people with ethnic roots outside the Middle East, its discovery raises the prospect that undiscovered mutations may be major causes of Parkinson's in other groups.
"Genetics are going to be a lot more important in Parkinson's than people have appreciated," said study leader Susan Bressman, a neurologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.
The finding -- described in a pair of reports in today's New England Journal of Medicine -- could help reveal at last the mysterious underpinnings of Parkinson's, which causes tremors, rigidity and mental decline and is growing more common as the population ages.
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