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Neurodegenerative Disease
Scientist links brain disorders to tradition of eating bats
September 1st, 2003
In a find that could link environmental toxins to several late-in-life brain disorders, a researcher has found high levels of neurotoxins in 50-year-old museum specimens of a Guam bat the Chamorro people consider a delicacy.
The discovery is a possible step in a decades-old quest to prove that flying fox bats were responsible for causing an epidemic of the neurological disease ALS-parkinsonism dementia complex in Guam. Incidence of the disease on the Pacific island territory from the 1940s up until the 1970s was 100 times higher than elsewhere, said Paul Cox, the study's lead author.
The disease has tapered off with the decline of the bat...
Source: Health & Medicine Week (2003-09-01)
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