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Brain Stimulation Treatment Reduces Parkinson’s Symptoms

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 January 2009, 15:44 CST

Researchers said on Tuesday that deep brain stimulation dramatically improves Parkinson's disease symptoms such as trembling and slowness of movement, offering hope to many with the incurable ailment.

The study offers the most hopeful news to date for Parkinson's sufferers. The new technique reduced tremors, rigidity and flailing of the limbs and allowed people to move freely for nearly five extra hours a day.

The tiny electrical device is implanted surgically in the chest, with wires leading to electrodes in the brain. It sends electrical signals to brain areas that control movement and can be adjusted and turned off and on.

The researchers studied 255 people with advanced Parkinson's at seven VA and six university hospitals. Patients were randomly assigned to have surgery plus the standard medication, or medication alone.

However, about 40 percent of the patients who received these "brain pacemakers" suffered serious side effects, including a surprising number of falls with injuries.

The patients, who did not know whether they had had surgery or medication, then visited neurologists after six months. In the surgery group, 86 out of 121 (71 percent) saw meaningful improvements in movement, as scored by the neurologists. In the medication group, 43 out of 134 patients (32 percent) showed meaningful improvements.

Motor functioning improved for 71 percent of the DBS patients. Their quality of life, like carrying out daily activities, mobility and emotional well-being, greatly improved.

Dr. William Marks, a University of California, San Francisco neurologist who helped lead the study, said the results provide the medical community with the highest class of evidence for the benefits of deep brain stimulation for properly selected patients.

He believes DBS may help patients whose symptoms are not well controlled by drugs.

There is no cure for Parkinson's disease, which is a brain disorder in which nerve cells in the brain that control muscle movement die, causing trembling, stiffness of the limbs and trunk, slowness of movement and impaired balance and coordination.

Many drugs used to control symptoms can lose their effectiveness over time or cause bad side effects, often leaving patients desperate to find a new approach.

But one woman, who got DBS in the study, said it restored her quality of life. "The bottom line for me is that without hope, you have nothing to go for with Parkinson's," said 51 year-old Sharon Pederson, from Northern California.

She said medication worked well for four or five years but started causing her arms to fling out wildly.

But the DBS surgery not only stopped the flailing, it halted an intense sensation that her nerve endings were burning and her depression also disappeared.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved deep brain stimulation in 2002 to treat Parkinson’s, but only a small percentage of patients get it.

Dr. Michael Okun of the National Parkinson Foundation said that while the treatment is not appropriate for everyone with Parkinson's disease, a surgery done on the right patient by the right team could have magnificent benefits that extend beyond what can be achieved with medicines alone.

More results from the study, which also compared two brain regions for electrode placement, are expected in about six months.

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On the Net:

• University of California, San Francisco
• FDA
• National Parkinson Foundation

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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