NEW YORK, Feb. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Michael J. Fox Foundation announced that it has awarded $1.1 million for an international clinical trial vetting the potential of a nicotine skin patch to modify the progression of Parkinson’s disease. The funding was made under the Clinical Intervention Awards initiative, one of MJFF’s Edmond J. Safra Core Programs for PD Research.
While scientists have previously studied the symptomatic effects of nicotine in Parkinson’s patients, this is the first long-term clinical trial expressly designed to test whether nicotine may in fact modify the progression of PD. Parkinson’s researchers have long been intrigued by epidemiological research showing a possible link between cigarette smoking and a lowered risk of PD: the disease is far less prevalent among smokers compared to never-smokers. Nicotine also has demonstrated beneficial effects on PD in pre-clinical studies. Yet key questions about the relationship among smoking, nicotine and Parkinson’s -- including whether smoking tobacco products in fact confers protection and, if so, whether this protection stems from the nicotine in those products -- remain unanswered.
The commercialization of a therapy capable of retarding or stopping the progression of Parkinson’s disease -- rather than merely masking symptoms while the underlying disease continues to worsen -- would be a transformative event in the lives of the estimated 5 million Parkinson’s patients worldwide. Transdermal nicotine holds the additional advantages of wide availability and relatively low cost.
About The Michael J. Fox Foundation
The Michael J. Fox Foundation is dedicated to ensuring the development of better treatments, and ultimately a cure, for Parkinson’s disease through an aggressively funded research agenda. MJFF has funded almost $176 million in research to date.
Michael J. Fox Foundation
