Checking for heart damage may predict risk of Pakinson's later
New York, July 14 : Examining stress and inflammation in the heart may be key to predicting risk of Parkinson's disease, say researchers, as it may help physicians test new therapies and delay the progression of the disorder.
According to researchers, by the time Parkinson's patients are diagnosed -- typically based on the tremors and motor-control symptoms -- about 60 per cent of them also have serious damage to the heart's connections to the sympathetic nervous system.
When healthy, those nerves spur the heart to accelerate its pumping to match quick changes in activity and blood pressure.
"This neural degeneration in the heart means patients' bodies are less prepared to respond to stress and to simple changes like standing up. They have increased risk for fatigue, fainting and falling that can cause injury and complicate other symptoms of the disease," said Marina Emborg, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US.
For the study, published in the journal npj Parkinson's Disease, the teams used rhesus macaque monkeys as models for Parkinson's symptoms, who received neurotoxin doses that caused damage to the nerves in their hearts in the same way as Parkinson's affects human patients.
The team found that tracing the progression of nerve damage and the progression of potential causes of that damage, the radioligands can also be used to test the efficacy of new treatments to protect the neurons that regulate the activity of the patients' hearts.
"We know there is damage in the heart in Parkinson's, but we haven't been able to look at exactly what's causing it. Now we can visualize in detail where inflammation and oxidative stress are happening in the heart, and how that relates to how Parkinson's patients lose those neuronal connections in the heart," said lead author Jeanette Metzger, from the varsity.
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MP: 7-year-old girl raped and murdered; minor relative detained
Barwani (MP), Jan 28 (PTI) Police on Wednesday detained a 17-year-old relative of a seven-year-old girl in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for allegedly raping her and killing her by throwing her into a canal, a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Jagdish Dawar told reporters that the body of the child was recovered from the Indira Sagar Canal on January 26, following information from residents of a village in the Rajpur police station area of the district.
He said the post-mortem report concluded severe injuries to the girl’s private parts and attributed her death to drowning.
Dawar said a 17-year-old boy, a close relative of the girl, has been detained in connection with the rape-murder.
The teenager told the police that he kidnapped the girl from her home on the night of January 25 while her family members were asleep, took her to a nearby canal and raped her, according to the official.
When the girl started screaming during the sexual assault, the minor boy allegedly threw her into the canal, with the intention of killing her. The child drowned in the water body, the official said.
The detained minor will be produced in a juvenile court.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and an investigation is underway, he added.
