[Cografting technique in the treatment of Parkinson's disease]

Intracerebral grafting of dopamine containing adrenal chromaffin cells to the brain of experimental animals can ameliorate the symptoms of experimentally induced Parkinson's disease. Clinical trials of adrenal autograft to the patients with Parkinson's disease are on-going with variable results and autopsy cases show poor survivability of grafted chromaffin cells. The present study was performed to determine if transected peripheral nerve could provide sufficient nerve growth factor to enhance the survivability of grafted chromaffin cells. Survivability of grafted chromaffin cells increased when cografts with sciatic nerve were performed, and host dopaminergic fiber recovery was more prominent in mice with cografts than in mice with adrenal grafts alone. Although this enhanced survivability and recovery of host fibers were seen in cografted mice from aging donors, the degree of these effects was greater in cografted mice from young donors. Considering these results, we suggest that methods to increase the survivability of grafted chromaffin cells be explored more deeply because such survivability might be closely related to the functional recovery of patients with Parkinson's disease, using this grafting procedure.