Fetal cells thrive in Parkinsonian brain.

Researchers have long suspected that transplanting fetal nerve cells could help people with Parkinson's disease, a neurological disorder characterized by a shuffling, unsteady walk. But they lacked direct proof.

A report in the April 27 New England Journal of Medicine confirms that fetal nerve cells can beneficially set up shop in the adult brain. "It's really the first case of its kind," says lead author Jeffrey H. Kordower of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago.

Kordower and his colleagues studied a 59-year-old man who suffered from advanced Parkinson's disease, a disorder that results from the destruction of cells originating in the brain's substantia nigra region. These nerve cells release the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is involved in regulating movement and emotional responses.

Kordower's team transplanted dopamine-producing nerve cells from donated tissue from aborted fetuses into the man's brain. The patient's motor function improved significantly, Kordower says. "He still had Parkinson's disease, but many of his problems had completely dissipated."

For reasons unrelated to the transplant, the man died 18 months later.

The researchers performed an autopsy and found that "the fetal cells survived in large numbers," Kordower says. The transplanted neurons had sent out long, fiberlike extensions that released dopamine, he adds.

"It is of paramount importance to determine whether the survival of implanted cells and the clinical improvement will be even longer-lasting in other patients," add Barry J. Hoffer and Craig van Horne of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. Hoffer and Horne wrote an editorial that appeared in the same issue of the journal.