The Newest Treatments for Parkinson’s Sufferers

With pharmacological and other treatments for Parkinson’s disease improving greatly over the last decade, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease is no longer an automatic sentence of dependency and dementia as it was once feared to be. New therapies are being discovered, with even greater successes anticipated in the future as national Parkinson’s associations and researchers put more funding and work into innovative treatments such as stem cell therapy.

Increased education and awareness of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease have resulted in many cases of early diagnosis, which with proper treatment, increases a Parkinson’s sufferer’s chance of managing the disease and maintaining a high quality of life.

Although there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease, a number of medications are available to manage the symptoms. As yet, however, none of the available drugs halt the progression of the disease. Here is a brief overview of some of the drugs available to Parkinson’s patients:

Levodopa: sold under brand name Sinemet in the United States, levodopa is absorbed by the brain and changed into dopamine, which helps make up for the lowered dopamine levels associated with Parkinson’s symptoms. For patients, the increased dopamine levels result in improved mobility. Larger doses of levodopa must be taken as the disease progresses, to counteract the lessening natural production of the chemical. Some patients may experience side effects such as involuntary movements, tics, or hallucinations. Levodopa was the first Parkinson’s-specific drug and is still the most commonly administered.

Carbidopa: another active agent contained in Sinemet is carbidopa, which helps prolong the benefits of levodopa in the brain while at the same time reducing side effects.

Dopamine agonists: often used in conjunction with levodopa, dopamine agonists such as bromocriptine, ropinirole, pergolide, and pramipexole dihydrocholoride, all sold under brand names; work in the substantia nigra (where natural dopamine is produced in healthy people) in a way that imitates dopamine.

A host of other drugs are available, too, and many of those work well to address issues such as Parkinson’s-related tremors.

Surgery is another option for some Parkinson’s patients, although due to the risks of operating on the brain, surgery is usually reserved for the most severely affected patients, or those who have rapidly progressing Parkinson’s. If non-invasive treatments have been ineffective, potential surgical remedies may include a procedure called a pallidotomy (which destroys a small part of the global pallidus, thought to be overactive in Parkinson’s patients), a thalamotomy (which destroys certain cells in the thalamus, and hopefully reduces hand or arm tremors), or deep brain stimulation (which involves embedding a small electrode into the brain to block signals that cause Parkinson’s symptoms). Deep brain stimulation, likened to a pacemaker for the brain, is a relatively new therapy that has had positive results.

The use of embryonic and adult stem cells is a promising new (and ethically controversial) therapy currently being researched to address a number of illnesses including Parkinson’s disease and Juvenile Diabetes. It is thought that embryonic stem cells, which are undifferentiated (meaning they have no specific purpose); can be manipulated to grow into the missing cells associated with Parkinson’s disease. Embryonic stem cells are derived from just developed embryos, which is the source of the ethical debate surrounding the research. Some countries have enacted legislation banning embryonic stem cell research, deciding instead to focus on the possibilities of adult stem cell research, which relies on stem cells taken from bone marrow.