Parkinson’s Disease May Be (Partially) an Autoimmune Disease

[Farooqji]

parkinsonsdisease.net/resea...

[Lisl]

Yep, I saw my neurologist yesterday and he blamed my co-existing autoimmune disease for a worsening of my PD. Both were triggered simultaneously by a severe infectious disease that my immune system fought like crazy...

I have no doubt that my immune system is heavily implicated,..

[JAS9]

2 years ago, I was emailing a very smart doctor named Allen Green, and he wrote this:

"PD appears to be a 2 hit disease.

Hit one may be any of several possible attacks on the brain and results in misfolded protein a-synuclein. This misfolded protein attaches itself to cell membranes and has a very odd shape.

Toll-like receptors (TLR) are part of the brain-gut innate immune system. TLR are the watch-dogs. They sound the alarm when they detect misfolded proteins that do not look like "self".

The microglia are the brain's police. They respond with TNF (tumor necrosis factor) and IL-1B. These are proinflammatory cytokines and produce inflammation.

So in effect, the second hit of Parkinson's disease is a quasi-autoimmune disease. I use term "quasi" in that the immune system is reacting to an abnormal or altered body protein, not a natural body protein. [in real autoimmune disease, the body protein is OK, its the immune system which is at fault]"

In my case, I think the initial attack was from Lymes Disease. I'd been bitten by a tick and developed the tell-tale round rash 8 months before my first PD symptom. Which makes this company's new drug just starting phase 2 human trials more than a little interesting: enterininc.com/enterin/

[PDGal4 in reply to JAS9]

Hmm, interesting. I was diagnosed with Lymes in 1990, took a 30 day round of strong antibiotics and was told it was gone. Over the years I've asked from time to time to have a blood test for Lymes and results always are negative. Diagnosed with PD in 2012, but somehow always wondered if there were a connection.

What are you doing for inflammation? I am back to gluten-free diet and find it is helping.

[Lilliwaup in reply to PDGal4]

You need to find a doc that specializes in Lyme Disease. I live in the country and spend a lot of time in the woods. Have read many articles and a lot of them are saying the disease is never really gone. Kind of like malaria. The docs that specialize do a much better job of treating it.

[JAS9 in reply to PDGal4]

Actually, there seem to be quite a few PwP who have also suffered from LD. If you search HU you'll find some posts. For some, I'm sure that they still have LD, but I've never had a symptom that was obviously LD and not PD, so I wonder if the "innate immune system" succeeded 10 years ago by getting rid of the LD, but then left behind the misfolded a-S, which have been causing problems since.

[PDGal4 in reply to JAS9]

Certainly food for thought. Thank you JAS9 and Lilliwaup for your input and advice.