According to Reuters news service:
When injected into the jugular vein of rats, it resulted in tremors, muscle stiffness and impaired balance.
Those are the classic symptoms of the neurological ailment known as Parkinson's disease, which is caused by the death of brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Nearly half of the rats in the study conducted by Ranjita Betarbet and colleagues of Emory University in Atlanta suffered damage to cells that produce dopamine.
According to Drs. Benoit I. Giasson and Virginia M.-Y. Lee from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, it is too early to say definitively whether the pesticide contributes to Parkinson's disease in humans, but the study is "likely to raise new questions about [rotenone's] safety."
The findings, published in the November issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, were presented Sunday to the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans.
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