Scientists report Parkinson's breakthrough, saying it may help fight TB

LONDON. KAZINFORM Scientists from a British university and a drugs firm on Tuesday announced that a potential advance in solving the mystery of what caused Parkinson's disease, saying that the finding may also help to combat drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB).

Researchers at the Crick Institute, Newcastle University, and the drugs firm GSK said that they believe that they have uncovered a potential cause of Parkinson's, the degenerative brain disease that affects 145,000 Britons, Xinhua reports.

The mechanism the human immune cells use to clear bacterial infections like TB might also be implicated in Parkinson's disease, according to the study.

The findings, which will be published in The EMBO Journal, provide a possible explanation of the cause of Parkinson's disease and suggest that drugs designed to treat Parkinson's might also work for TB, which kills 1.67 million people globally every year.

The biological causes of Parkinson's remain largely unknown, making it more difficult to develop and improve treatments.

Discovering a mechanism that causes Parkinson's and how drugs affect it could significantly advance efforts to improve treatments.

These findings in cells were supported by experiments in mice.

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