Glial Cells as a Target for the Development of New Therapies for Treating Parkinson's Disease.

Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer's disease. This disease is mainly characterized by tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity and postural instability that results primarily from a loss of dopaminergic neurons of the nigrostriatal pathway. MPTP (1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine) is well known to damage the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway, as seen in Parkinson's disease. Recent evidence shows that glial-related response plays a key role in the MPTP neurotoxic process, and the blockade of glial activation may be a new therapeutic approach to treating Parkinson's disease. In view of these new insights, this article suggests that the overexpression of S100beta protein secreted by glial cells may be an exacerbating factor in the neurodegeneration of dopaminergic cells in MPTP-treated animals. (c) 2002 Prous Science. All rights reserved.