By Roberta Attanasio, IEAM Blog Editor

For the past few years, Parkinson’s disease and its association with exposure to pesticides has been the topic of a hot debate – one after the other, studies have shown a clear epidemiologic link between disease development and pesticide exposure without, however, identifying any related mechanism of action. Finally, in January 2013, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pointed out a mechanism of action for the fungicide benomyl, a persistent pesticide that is still present in the environment despite having been banned by the U.S. in 2001. Now, results from in the current issue (February 4, 2014) of the journal Neurology show that several additional pesticides may be involved in the development of Parkinson’s disease, with a mechanism similar to that described for benomyl. Continue reading →