Break Throughs in Technology help Parkinson’s Patients Get Moving on World Parkinson’s Day
CHATTANOOGA, TN – April is known as National Parkinson’s Awareness month and April the 11th is World Parkinson’s Awareness Day and symbolized by Red Tulips, People Wearing Grey for Parkinson’s, and a new global symbol – the spark.
Symptoms of Parkinson’s date back hundreds of years, the first medical description was written by James Parkinson in 1817. Probably the two most famous cases of Parkinson’s that we know of are Muhammad Ali and Michael J. Fox. While we know that, what actually is it and how do you know if you have it?
According to Dr. Tom Davis, Professor of Neurology and Division Chief Movement Disorders at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, “Parkinson’s Disease is a neurogenerative disorder that is characterized by difficulty with motor function. So tremor, stiffness, slowness, and loss of balance. Not everybody has all of those things. And it is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the United States.”
Up until recently Parkinson’s Disease was exclusively a clinical diagnosis. Technology has progressed and has been able to assist in this diagnosis. “The neuro degeneration that occurs in Parkinson’s Disease is Premature loss of cells in the brain that make a chemical called dopamine and so the DAT scan looks at that and if you have decreased uptake of dopamine,” says Dr. Davis, “that is characteristic of Parkinson’s Disease or some of the related but less common Parkinson’s Disease mimics. The other technology that has recently become available would be skin biopsy. There’s a protein called alpha-synuclein that abnormally precipitates in the brains of people with Parkinson’s Disease. It also tends to accumulate in the peripheral nerves, and so you can do a skin biopsy and stain for alpha-synuclein, and the skin biopsy staining for alpha-synuclein is also a pretty sensitive test for Parkinson’s Disease.”
A clinical diagnosis is still required for Parkinson’s, but new technology has helped bring us a long way since 1817 with diagnosis and treatments. Currently there is no cure for Parkinson’s, but technology has made efforts in treating and making the disease less of an impact. Most people believe Muhammad Ali got Parkinsons from his years in the ring, but that’s not entirely true. There are genetic and environmental factors and not genetic in the sense that it’s passed down, but there are genetic risk factors that would make someone more susceptible than another. Muhammad Ali is the only person to win the World Heavyweight Boxing Title three times, and on Sept 15th 1979 he became the only fighter to win it potentially with Parkinson’s. Experts have analyzed his fight patterns and his speech and determined that most likely he was fighting thru the symptoms then. According to Dr. Davis, working out and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is probably what helped Ali live a long and healthy life. While experts like him would recommend you maintain exercise and stay active, probably getting punched in the face isn’t the best form of exercise.
The cases of Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali seem to be different, and according to Dr. Davis that is not uncommon. “Clinically, Parkinson’s Disease is a very broad disorder. Such that if you took a hundred patients who had had Parkinson’s Disease for 10 years and put them in a room, they would look very different. Some would remain relatively mildly affected and some would be severely affected. So there is a lot of range of symptoms within the global Parkinson’s patient population.”
Thanks to the work of people like Dr. Davis and our friends at the Parkinsons Foundation, the FDA is approving new technologies to help with the treatment of symptoms. “We actually have two new pump technologies that pump in medication subcutaneously, like an insulin pump, for symptomatic treatment of Parkinson’s Disease. And we have a new deep brain stimulation paradigm, where we have adaptive DBS, where the DBS electrode, instead of just being a constant rate of stimulation, can record off of adjacent brain areas and then modulate the amount of stimulation based on the recording.”
Evan Christian is Development Manager for TN KY Chapters of the Parkinson’s Foundation. World Parkinson’s Day was started in increase awareness around Parkinson’s and to encourage people to get tested for early detection. “There’s currently 10 million people in the world with Parkinson’s and 1 million of those are living in the US. Recently more than 90k people in America are being diagnosed every single year,” says Christian. “So every April we like to bring attention to the disease and the significance of April is that James Parkinson was born in April. In April we do a lot of what we call Moving Day Events. So these are days of exercise and celebration where you encourage people with PD and their care partners to get out and exercise and move. We have these events all across the country.
Movement is critical to everyone living with Parkinson’s as well as the people who are helping care for you. You can find a moving day event near you at the link here on the screen.
I need to say thank you to Melissa Nobles-Gonzalez who is the Public Relations Manager for the Parkinson’s Foundation, and she set up these interviews for us, so I do appreciate her time and effort. She and I joked that our generation grew up with infomercials about calling toll free numbers for help and how we were probably numb to it. I will say, if you or a loved one has questions about Parkinson’s and resources, their call center is very genuine, very helpful, and very caring. You’re not calling someone that is reading a prompt trying to get you off the phone, you’re calling people that have been trained with countless hours who are ultimately here to help. The Parkinson’s Foundation is also doing the largest study ever of genetics for any disease where they’re offering free screening for genetic risk factors for anyone living with Parkinson’s. Currently the foundation is conduction the largest study of any disorder, the PD GENEration is providing genetic testing and counseling for people with Parkinson’s Disease.
For information about events or moving days near you, or to get help for you or a loved one please visit Parkinson.Org for more information.
