Early parkinson's detection

[ljh at sienna.cc.utexas.edu]

I'm not a neurologist, but that idea sounds pretty risky to me.
Unfortunately we can't send chemicals to just one specific part of the
brain, and the same neurotransmitters get used throughout the brain. So
after a while L-dopa starts causing problems through its effect on
dopamine receptors in other areas of the brain. It seems that giving
L-dopa prophalactically would result in the side effects showing up
earlier, so it would be unwise to administer it before it was really
medically necessary.
  Lisa J. Harris
  Doctoral Student, Speech Pathology