High Urate May Slow Parkinson’s

People with Parkinson’s disease may get worse at a slower pace if they have high levels of a substance called urate in their blood. That’s the conclusion of a study of 800 people with mild Parkinson’s. People with high urate levels were only half as likely as others to get much worse in a two-year period. They lost fewer brain cells that produce a substance called dopamine. Therefore, they did not need medicine to replace it. Researchers are planning another study that will give patients a supplement called inosine. The body converts inosine to urate. USA Today wrote about the study April 16. It was in the journal Archives of Neurology.