From: "Rich Gauszka" 


"Mike N."  wrote in message
news:pism13t1sf64cu00po4si047th4l08j54b{at}4ax.com...
> On Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:41:57 -0400, Rich Gauszka
>  wrote:
>
>>People with Parkinson's disease are less likely to be smokers and coffee
>>drinkers than their healthy siblings,
>
>  Is that because the smokers would have died off early, and thus not have
> been eligible for the study?

I suspect they may have taken that into consideration

http://www.miamiherald.com/299/story/68657.html
One theory: Both caffeine and smoking increase the body's supply of the
''pleasure hormone'' dopamine. And typically, as people develop symptoms of
Parkinson's disease, they begin to lose the neurons that produce dopamine.

''There's a connection among all these things,'' Scott says.

A next step is to further explore the interaction of caffeine and nicotine
with an individual's genetic makeup to see who is and isn't protected from
Parkinson's by the two substances, Scott says.

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