A groundbreaking new study out of Northwestern Medicine may offer new hope for the more than one million Americans living with Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers have identified a possible trigger for the neurodegenerative disorder — a virus once believed to be harmless to humans.
Dr. Igor Koralnik, who is the chief of the Division of Neuroinfectious Diseases and Global Neurology at Northwestern, analyzed brain tissue from deceased patients.
His team discovered the presence of Human Pegivirus — a virus not previously linked to any known disease — in half of the Parkinson’s patients studied.
“We found the presence of a virus that was unsuspected,” said Dr. Koralnik. “This is a blood-borne virus that can be found in 5-to-10% of healthy blood donors. It’s related to hepatitis C — and we found it in 50% of brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease.”
The study, recently published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, compared brain tissue from individuals with Parkinson’s to those without the disease. The unexpected presence of Human Pegivirus in Parkinson’s brains raises important questions about the virus’s role — if any — in the disease’s development.
“These are tantalizing findings that beg for more research,” Dr. Koralnik said.
Because the virus is similar to hepatitis C, researchers now plan to investigate whether existing hepatitis C medications might also help treat or even prevent Parkinson’s.
“Medication targeting the hepatitis C virus could be potentially repurposed to target the Human Pegivirus, also in the brain of some people with Parkinson’s disease,” said Dr. Koralnik.
Researchers also hope to answer the question: How often does this virus get into the brains of people with Parkinson’s and those without Parkinson’s?
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