Source: Brown University
Date: March 20, 2008
Summary:
Researchers at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and at Rhode Island Hospital have discovered a gene that could hold the key to developing new treatments for Parkinson’s disease – a progressive and often debilitating movement disorder that affects as many as one million Americans. According to the findings of the study, published online in the American Journal of Human Genetics, mutations in the gene, known as GIGYF2, appear to be directly linked to the development of Parkinson’s in people with a family history of the disease. The gene is one of only a handful linked to Parkinson’s and one of just two genes known to be a common contributor to this degenerative disease, which has no known cause or cure.
