The more the disease progresses, the more the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease get worse and interfere with daily life. If the first severe symptoms – which occur after a few years – make impossible to walk more than a few meters or sleep in one gothe disease can end up locking the sick in a wheelchair.
The reason for this disability is explained by a symptom called theorthostatic hypotension : when the affected person gets up, his blood pressure drops and his brain is no longer fed enough. In this case, the patient will faint after only a few steps. And in the case of patients with Parkinson’s or similar pathologies, they no longer benefit from the reflex which ensures the return of sufficient blood flow to the brain.
Allow advanced Parkinson’s to continue walking
A first studypublished on April 7, 2022 in the New England Journal of Medicine, opened an encouraging first track which could allow advanced Parkinson’s patients to be able to continue to walk. Two researchers have implanted electrodes in the spinal cord of a patient. If the latter was not really suffering from Parkinson’s disease, she suffered from a similar pathology and was notably affected by orthostatic hypotension.
Before having these electrodes placed, this patient could only walk a few meters before fainting. Three months later, she has been able to cover more than 250 meters, using a walker. “She is not cured, she would not run a marathon, but this surgery has clearly improved her quality of life.”, says surgeon Jocelyne Bloch, who supervised the study. The only limit of this study: it is only an isolated case and the experiment remains to be carried out on patients actually suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
Fight against insomnia
Almost simultaneously, a new study came up with promising results about another detrimental symptom of Parkinson’s patients: insomnia. Anxiety, uncontrollable movements, lack of dopamine – the hormone whose disappearance explains Parkinson’s… The causes of sleep disorders in Parkinson’s patients are numerous.
Published in the Lancet Neurology this April 14, 2022, thestudy used a pump to deliver medication to Parkinson’s patients, theapomorphine. And if she was only interested in the use of the pump at night, the results remain rather encouraging. Unlike patients who received a placebo, patients who received apomorphine reported a significantly better quality sleep.
However, these results remain to be confirmed: it only involved around forty patients and the effectiveness of this device has yet to be proven.
Sources:
- “Implanted system for orthostatic hypotension in multiple-system atrophy”, The New England Journal of MedicineApril 7, 2022
- “Safety and efficacy of subcutaneous night-time only apomorphine infusion to treat insomnia in patients with Parkinson’s disease (APOMORPHEE): a multicentre, randomised, controlled, double-blind crossover study”, The Lancet NeurologyApril 14, 2022
Read also:
- Parkinson’s disease: symptoms, treatment, course
- Parkinson: even if it is frequent, the disease is still as little known to the general public
- Parkinson’s disease: two new early signs of the disease have been identified