SELECTIVE DOPAMINE NEUROTOXICITY BY AN INDUSTRIAL-CHEMICAL - AN ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSE OF PARKINSONS-DISEASE

While unproved, environmental toxins of industrial and or agricultural origin represent an attractive theory to explain the increasing incid ence of degenerative diseases of the nervous-system such as Parkinson' s disease (PD). We have examined several chemicals utilized in an area of Israel previously demonstrated to contain a statistically greater than average number of people with Parkinson's disease. One of these a gents, a light stabilizer employed universally in the production of po lyolifins used in plastics, depleted primary mesencephalic cultures of dopamine neurons, and produced a dopamine-specific lesion of the subs tantia nigra pars compacta when injected stereotactically into the ven tral midbrain of adult rats. The observed effects were dose-dependent. These findings represent a potentially significant development in the search for industrial/environmental causes of neurodegenerative disea se. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.