Ninds - parkinsons

Because Parkinson’s is a chronic illness, the issues that face persons with Parkinson’s disease vary with the stage of the disease.   One challenge for research is how best to improve quality of life across the span of this disease.  This past fall and winter the NINDS and the Parkinson’s community wrestled with this challenge in developing research recommendations for Parkinson’s disease (PD recommendations for research). Two main themes emerged.  First was the emphasis placed on developing better treatments for the non-motor manifestations such as declining cognition, dyskinesias, and impaired balance, autonomic and gait dysfunction.   These troublesome symptoms usually occur in the later stages of the illness and persist despite the beneficial treatments for tremor and bradykinesia, ie., medications, brain stimulation, and exercise.  Research avenues include pharmacologic or electrical modification of brain circuits to enable the brain to compensate for the pathologic changes that have already occurred.  The other challenge relates to the second main theme – to develop a means to slow or stop the spread of pathologic changes in the brain that underlies the progression of symptoms. Parkinson’s disease is now thought to begin decades before motor symptoms occur.  New symptoms sequentially plague patients as the pathologic changes spread from one part of the nervous system to another, and when the brain is severely affected the previously beneficial treat...
Source: PHRMA - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news