(Health Day News) -- A combination of genetic mutations and exposure to insecticides may increase a man's risk of Parkinson's disease, new research shows.

The study included 207 Parkinson's disease patients and a control group of 482 healthy people. The French team of researchers analyzed the participants for mutations in a gene called ABCB1 and assessed their lifetime exposure to pesticides.

Overall, mutations in the ABCB1 gene weren't associated with Parkinson's disease risk. However, the researchers found that the association between organo chlorine insecticide exposure and Parkinson's disease was 3.5 times stronger in men with two mutated copies of the ABCB1 gene than among those with no ABCB1 mutations.

"Based on a biological hypothesis, we show that organo chlorine insecticides may interact with ABCB1 in determining the risk of Parkinson's disease,"Fabien Dutheil, of Universite Paris Descartes, Assistance-Publique Hopitaux de Paris, and colleagues concluded. "These findings support the hypothesis of gene x pesticide interactions in Parkinson's disease."

The study is published in the June issue of the Archives of Neurology.

AP State Wire

The state has awarded nearly $10 million in grants to fund stem cell research at Yale and the University of Connecticut.

The grants, which are the fourth round of state stem cell funding, will fund 22 projects that span areas such as the role of stem cells in understanding or treating Huntington's disease, leukemia, Parkinson's disease and osteoarthritis.

The grants come from a $100 million state fund for stem cell research established in 2005 when federal funding for research using human embryonic stem cells was restricted.

Federal policy has since changed, but scientists and policymakers say state funding has helped Connecticut in stem cell research, allowing universities to develop labs and recruit scientists.

Health Day

A new voice analysis technique can identify changes in speech associated with the early stages of Parkinson's disease, a new study has found.

"This is a noninvasive, reliable and accurate technique that only requires the patient to read out a few simple sentences," Shimon Sapir, of the department of communication sciences and disorders at the University of Haifa in Israel, who developed the new test, said in a university news release.

In many cases,Parkinson's disease is diagnosed based on muscle rigidity, tremors, slow movement and loss of balance. But by the time these symptoms are present, the disease is already well-advanced.

Since the muscles controlling voice and speech are affected in most people with Parkinson's disease, Sapir decided to develop an acoustic analysis method that identified differences between the speech of people with Parkinson's disease and healthy people. The method also tracks voice changes that occur in response to treatment or disease progression.

A series of tests showed that the new acoustic analysis technique is effective. The findings were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

"Doctors and scientists agree that early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease is important in order to slow down or even prevent the degenerative progress of this disease,"Sapir said. "Today no treatment is available to this effect, but when treatment becomes feasible, early diagnosis is going to be crucial.There are various methods of brain imaging for detecting early signs of Parkinson's disease, but these methods are expensive -- particularly when attempting to screen a large population at risk. Hence the importance of developing techniques for early diagnosis that are valid,reliable, non-invasive, simple, readily available and inexpensive."

But Sapir added that "while our initial results are very encouraging,additional studies must be carried out in order to examine the new method. Also, given that the disease and its progression have different effects on individuals, speech analysis must be incorporated into a battery of tests that examine other signs and symptoms of the disease,such as changes in handwriting, cognitive functions, sense of smell, and more."