Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease Linked to Fungus

From Rutgers Today – November 11, 2013.

Rutgers researcher and CEED member Joan Bennett’s work on indoor mold exposure follows her own illness suffered while cleaning up flood damage from Hurricane Katrina.

Scientists at Rutgers and Emory universities have discovered that a compound often emitted by mold may be linked to symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Arati Inamdar and Joan Bennett, researchers in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers, used fruit flies to establish the connection between the compound – popularly known as mushroom alcohol – and the malfunction of two genes involved in the packaging and transport of dopamine, the chemical released by nerve cells to send messages to other nerve cells in the brain.