An asthma medication seems to lower Parkinson’s disease risks

John Timmer reports at ars technica,

drugs often have off-target effects. While the drug was designed to latch on to a specific protein in one tissue, that protein or a close relative may be doing something important in a different tissue. While that's generally viewed as a problem, it can also be helpful. Researchers are finding that some drugs can be effective against diseases for which they were never intended.

That may be the case for an asthma medication called clenbuterol. It and a series of related drugs came through a screen that targeted a very different disorder: Parkinson's disease, caused by the death of specific nerve cells in the brain. And a search through the drug-use history of Norway suggests that the discovery is more than a fluke.

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