FINDINGS
Tuesday, August 12, 2003;
Page A07
Parkinson's Drug Tied To Addictive Gambling
A drug given to Parkinson's disease patients may
have a peculiar side effect -- compulsive gambling, U.S. researchers
said yesterday.
A small but meaningful number of patients taking Mirapex
gambled themselves into debt, while patients taking other drugs did
not, a team at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center in Phoenix
reported.
Mark Stacy and colleagues studied more than 1,800
Parkinson's patients for a year. Of the 529 who got Mirapex, eight
developed serious gambling addictions, they reported.
"Seven men and two women were found to have gambling
behavior severe enough to cause financial hardship, and two patients
reported losses greater than $60,000," they wrote in the journal
Neurology. "No subjects on levodopa therapy alone or on any other .
. . regimen were found to have symptoms of obsessive or excessive
gambling."
Parkinson's, which affects about 1.5 million Americans, is
caused by the death of brain cells that produce dopamine, an
important message-carrying chemical involved in movement.
Mild
Virus Could Yield Vaccine for West Nile
A mild
virus related to West Nile disease protected mice from the deadly
illness when used as a vaccine, a team of Australian researchers
reported.
The researchers, led by Roy Hall of the University of
Queensland, studied a relatively harmless virus called Kunjin that
has genetic similarities to West Nile but produces only mild,
nonfatal disease.
Hall and colleagues injected mice with varying amounts of
weakened Kunjin DNA. When tested after 19 days, the mouse blood
produced antibodies to both Kunjin and West Nile, the team reported
in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
They then gave the mice a lethal dose of West Nile virus,
and the animals that had received even a small dose of Kunjin were
protected. The researchers suggested Kunjin may provide a source for
developing a vaccine for humans and horses.
Vitamins May Combat Inherited Cholesterol
Children and young adults who have inherited high
cholesterol may reduce their risk of clogged arteries by taking
vitamins C and E, researchers reported yesterday.
The vitamins improve blood flow through the arteries and
may prevent the damage that leads to atherosclerosis, the
researchers said.
In the journal Circulation, Marguerite Engler of the
University of California at San Francisco and colleagues said the
study is the first to show that vitamins can reverse the damage.
"When we gave these children moderate doses of vitamins C and E for
six weeks, we saw a significant improvement in blood-vessel
function, which is an important indicator of cardiovascular health,"
Engler said in a statement.
An estimated 50 million U.S. children have high levels of
cholesterol and thus a high risk of heart disease and heart attack.
The American Heart Association defines this as cholesterol of 200 or
higher and low-density lipoprotein -- LDL or "bad" cholesterol -- of
130 or higher.
Diets rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fat,
especially animal fat, have also been shown to lower cholesterol and
the risk of heart disease -- but few Americans eat this kind of
diet.
Compiled from reports by Reuters and Associated
Press
© 2003 The Washington Post
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