What actually happens in parkinsonism?

[Harrish]

Although the many break-throughs in so many neurological diseases, Parkinson disease still remains a mystery that affects quite a lot of people directly or indirectly. I have been doing an experiment on Parkinson disease now 4 months and the results are still to be seen when I shall assess the membrane potential of mitochondria present in the midbrain. The results will tell me if a decrease in membrane potential in turn leading to cell apoptosis which causes this degenerative process is or not the pathological change behind this disease. I am using the JC-1 method to assess membrane potential. Well, I would like to have your views and comments on Parkinson disease and what should I do to improve such an experiment, and any questions you would like to ask about the experiment or if any questions you like me to answer.

 

[DocToxyn]

Are you doing this research as part of a graduate degree? Do you plan to publish it? If so, you may want to hold off on bringing too much of your work out into the public arena. In order for us to fully understand and discuss your work we will have to know (amoung other things): 1 - what type of tissue are you using - cell line, primary cells, tissue slices... 2- what model of parkinsons are you using - 6-OHDA, MPTP... 3 - method of analysis - flow cytometry, confocal microscopy? What background research have you done? There seems to be several published papers using JC-1 to examine delta-psi in parkinson's models. What are you doing differently than they did?

Having said this, if you just want to get into a discussion about PD and say...what models are good or what's wrong or right with current therapies, etc that would be great and I encourage you to do so. We can also touch on some of the above issues/methodologies, but I would hesitate to be too forthcoming with actual on-going experimental data.