Common Sweetener Could Help Treat Parkinson's Disease
The Sweet Taste Of Treatment Wrigley Mannitol, a plant-produced sweetener used in gum and candies, has proven effective at blocking production of a Parkinson's-related protein. A sweetener produced by most plants could hold the key to treating Parkinson's disease, a recent paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry asserts. Mannitol, a sugar alcohol found in plants and fungi, is used as a sweetener for candies and jams, as well as as the dusting powder on chewing gum and in chewable pharmaceutical tablets. Researchers from Tel Aviv University have found it can also prevent a protein called α-synuclein from clumping in the brain, which has been associated with Parkinson's Disease. After discovering that mannitol could effectively prevent the protein from clumping in test tubes in the lab, the researchers studied the locomotive abilities of fruit flies that had been genetically altered to carry the gene for α-synuclein by watching their...