The Parkinson disease particularly affects the over 65s. About one in 100 French people will develop this disease after 50 years. Much research is being carried out to help fight this pathology.
Efficiency at an early stage
The method of deep brain stimulation Developed in the 1980s and practiced mainly in France, offers good prospects for the future. Currently it can only be used on a minority of patients (10 to 15%), having declared the disease before their 70 years of age and not having psychiatric disorders or memory.
The Franco-German study Earlystim has just confirmed that this technique could be offered at an earlier stage of the disease, between 4 and 10 years after the first symptoms. Eight French centers and nine German centers have combined their efforts over two years to carry out this research. It has involved 251 Parkinson’s patients for about 7 years. They were divided into two groups. The first was processed by medications and the second by deep brain stimulation.
Up to 90% of capacity recovered
As a result, patients treated with brain stimulation saw their quality of life improve by more than 26% compared to the other group. They were in better shape and had better morale, more mobility and less tremors. But no difference was noticed between the two groups in terms of recovery of intellectual functions.
Brain stimulation consists of surgically implanting electrodes in the brain connected to a battery, much like a pacemaker. Electrical impulses are sent to reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. In general, this operation allows patients to recover from 30 to 90% of their capacity.
