How a tropical bean could help treat Parkinson’s tremors

by Meredith Bauer-Mitchell and Eva Sailly

A major challenge with Parkinson’s disease is managing tremors. Typically, one way they are treated is by taking medications that increase dopamine. 

But what if instead, the prescription could be a plate of beans? 

That’s what researchers at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) want to test in a newly funded study looking into the effect of velvet beans as a treatment for symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. 

Parkinson’s disease affects more than 1.1 million people in the U.S., according to the Parkinson’s Foundation. Tremors that affect daily life are a challenging part of the disease, and one treatment for those symptoms is called levodopa, which becomes dopamine in the brain to help manage proper muscle movement. 

The challenge is that the medication can be difficult to get in certain regions of the globe, so researchers began looking into plants that might produce the same compounds that can be grown worldwide.
 

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