Michael J. Fox Foundation's Rapid Response Innovation Awards Hit Mid-2009 With More Than $1 Million Funded in High-risk/High-reward Approaches to Parkinson's Disease

--Richard Smeyne, PhD, of Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital will test the hypothesis that the virulent H5N1 (“bird flu”) strain of influenza virus can play a role in inducing parkinsonism. There is significant literature, mostly based on cases from the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918, documenting Parkinson’s disease following exposure to flu virus. The researchers hypothesize that flu can induce aspects of PD including cell loss, as well as to show how viruses access the nervous system.