Doctors from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (UK) are testing a new technique that would treat tremor in the Parkinson disease without performing invasive brain surgery.
Send ultrasound to specific parts of the brain
About 195,000 people in France are affected by the state of essential tremor, which causes uncontrollable shaking in Parkinson’s disease. Other patients suffer from tremors because of neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis, for example.
At the origin of these tremors: abnormal electrical circuits in the brain, which transmit tremors through the nervous system to the muscles.
Performed under local anesthesia, the new treatmentBritish doctors involves the precise application of thermal energy from ultrasound waves to very specific parts of the brain to break the abnormal circuitry causing the tremor.
Parkinson’s tremors prevent patients from living normally
Lucas Selwyn, 52, a painter and decorator from St Austell in Cornwall, has lived with a tremor for 20 years and was one of the first people to receive the treatment. For many years the man managed to live a relatively normal life with the tremor, but over the past five years the symptom has started to take his life away.
“It was particularly difficult to continue my work as a painter and decorator and I had to learn to carry out my tasks using my left hand, explains the creative. Thanks to the treatment, I was able to write my name for the first time since many years.”
Rather promising anti-tremor therapies
“We anticipate that this new approach to therapy in essential tremor and other movement disorders will lead to enormous improvements in the quality of life of patients without the need for invasive, expensive, poorly tolerated and often ineffective procedures, said Professor Wladyslaw Gedroyc, consultant radiologist and principal investigator of this latest trial of 20 patients.
The development of focused ultrasound techniques offers a promising tool for treating tremors, experts say. “This therapy could provide similar benefits to deep brain stimulation, but without the invasive brain surgery that involved risks of infection,” explained Claire Bale, UK Parkinson’s Research Communications and Engagement Manager. United.
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