New Evidence Links Traumatic Brain Injury With Parkinsons
A new study finds that traumatic brain injury from a blow to the head, with loss of consciousness, may increase a persons risk of developing Parkinsons disease later in life. The results appear in the July 11 online edition of JAMA Neurology. The researchers did not find an association between head injury and Alzheimer’s disease.
The neurological effects of head injuries are much in the news, with worry over repeated, relatively mild, concussions among athletes, and with the recent death of boxing great Muhammad Ali, who lived with Parkinson’s disease. This new study, however, focused narrowly on the long-term effects of even one instance of trauma to the head especially injuries involving loss of consciousness among older people more representative of the general population.
Researchers led by Paul K. Crane, M.D., M.P.H., at the University of Washington in Seattle, analyzed self-reported data, collected between 1994 and 2014, from 7,130 people who had enrolled in other studies that gathered data on memory, cognition and aging. On average, study participants were 80 years old at the time of this report, and did not have dementia, PD, or Alzheimers disease when they enrolled in the original studies. Forty percent were men. Brain tissue was examined on autopsy for 1,589 participants, to search for signs of PD and Alzheimers disease.
Results
What Does It Mean?
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Can I Be Cured If I Get Parkinsons Disease
Unfortunately, Parkinsons disease is not curable. There has not been developed a method that completely remove or reverse the disease condition. However, the disease symptoms can be managed with treatment. The medication available today has not only increased the quality of life but also enormously prolonged the life expectancy of patients.
What Doctors Expect Longer
While other patients struggle to do the same, clinicians such as Gilbert stress there is good reason to believe that such lingering effects of COVID-19 will ultimately be surmountable with time. We don’t think that the medical illness necessarily alters the course of PD, or makes more neurons die, so we typically expect people to return to their baseline, she says. Knowing that is important, as it gives people encouragement that the illness did not set their PD on a different course, even though it may seem that way in the short term. In the meantime, doctors recommend staying connected with peer support groups and exercise classes virtually, as much as is possible, to help with recovery.
Though recovery may take longer than patients would like, Tanner says there is cause for optimism: This is a really resilient community. People are strong and they’re fighters.
Cheryl Platzman Weinstock is a contributing writer who covers health and science research and its impact on society. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
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New Technologies For The Diagnosis Clinical Assessment And Treatment Of Parkinsons Disease
In the last decade, new technology-based tools and technology-based therapies have been advanced with the objective of refining the diagnosis, clinical assessment and treatment of patients with movement disorders. The development and intricacy of molecular and cellular techniques, as well as extraordinary progress in technology, have marked a milestone in our general understanding of the disease.
Is There A Cure Or Treatment For Parkinsons Disease
Unfortunately, Parkinsons disease has no cure and is degenerative, meaning it will get worse over time especially if untreated. Patients who suffer from Parkinsons disease often have low levels of dopamine and theres no way to inject dopamine directly into the brain.
However, advances in medicine can help manage or even control some of your symptoms. But your treatment will likely have to be lifelong.
Treatment for Parkinsons disease includes:
- Medications to help manage or substitute the dopamine in your brain
- Medications to manage specific symptoms such as tremors or rigidity
- Exercise and physical therapy with a focus on balance and stretching
- Speech-language therapy to help improve your speaking ability
- Deep brain stimulation surgery to reduce your symptoms
A neurodegenerative disease like Parkinsons can dramatically affect your life.
- You may become unable to work or care for your basic physical needs without help.
- The treatments you need could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.
- You may need a full-time caretaker or family member to look after you.
- You may become unable to enjoy certain activities because of your disability.
- You may suffer daily pain, discomfort, or emotional distress due to your condition.
A personal injury lawsuit can help you get the medical treatment you need and hold the responsible party to account for monetary damages.
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What Are The Symptoms Of Parkinsons Disease
Symptoms of Parkinsons disease and the rate of decline vary widely from person to person. The most common symptoms include:
Other symptoms include:
- Speech/vocal changes: Speech may be quick, become slurred or be soft in tone. You may hesitate before speaking. The pitch of your voice may become unchanged .
- Handwriting changes: You handwriting may become smaller and more difficult to read.
- Depression and anxiety.
- Sleeping disturbances including disrupted sleep, acting out your dreams, and restless leg syndrome.
- Pain, lack of interest , fatigue, change in weight, vision changes.
- Low blood pressure.
Forced Exercise And Stress Reduction Reverse Parkinsons Symptoms
If you read last weeks post Doctors Call for an End to the Parkinsons Pandemic, you learned that Parkinsons disease is most often the result of a complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors, which include exposure to neurotoxic chemicals, head trauma, lack of exercise, diet, gut dysbiosis, and chronic stress.
While there is no cure for Parkinsons disease, there are documented cases of improvement and recovery. Recovery in these cases is defined mainly by an elimination of motor symptoms. As I mentioned in last weeks post, motor symptoms begin when dopamine levels and neuron loss reach a critically low thresholdIll explain how that works in this post. When people are able to boost their dopamine levels and/or restore enough dopaminergic neurons that they can get past this threshold, their motor symptoms can go away.
In this post Ill discuss why motor symptoms occur, research on neurogenesis in the substantia nigra of Parkinsons patients, how exercise and stress reduction reduce motor symptoms, and stories of recovery from Parkinsons disease. As you will learn, reducing and potentially eliminating motor symptomsand even restoring sense of smellis a realistic goal that Parkinsons patients are already pursuing.
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Sidebar: Morris K Udall Centers Of Excellence For Parkinson’s Disease Research
The Morris K. Udall Parkinsons Disease Research Act of 1997 authorized the NIH to greatly accelerate and expand PD research efforts by launching the NINDS Udall Centers of Excellence, a network of research centers that provide a collaborative, interdisciplinary framework for PD research. Udall Center investigators, along with many other researchers funded by the NIH, have made substantial progress in understanding PD, including identifying disease-associated genes investigating the neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to PD, developing and improving PD research models, and discovering and testing potential therapeutic targets for developing novel treatment strategies.
The Udall Centers continue to conduct critical basic, translational, and clinical research on PD including: 1) identifying and characterizing candidate and disease-associated genes, 2) examining neurobiological mechanisms underlying the disease, and 3) developing and testing potential therapies. As part of the program, Udall Center investigators work with local communities of patients and caregivers to identify the challenges of living with PD and to translate scientific discoveries into patient care. The Centers also train the next generation of physicians and scientists who will advance our knowledge of and treatments for PD. See the full list of Udall Centers.
Q: How Does The Delta Variant Affect Someone With Pd
A: We do not have any specific data yet on how the Delta variant affects people with PD.
The COVID-19 virus, like all viruses, is able to mutate and create variants of itself. Many variants of COVID-19 have been identified around the world. Only a few of these variants have been of concern to public health however, because they have a characteristic that makes the virus either more easily transmissible or more likely to cause significant disease. The Delta variant is currently the variant of concern and has been shown to be more easily transmitted from person to person than prior variants of COVID.
The vaccines approved in the US do offer protection against the Delta variant, but not to the extent that was seen in the original trials. That means that fully vaccinated people are more likely to get infected with the Delta variant of COVID-19 than other variants. However, the major goal of the vaccines is to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19 and all the approved vaccines are approximately 90% effective in preventing these consequences of infection. Therefore, vaccination remains extremely valuable.
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Q: Can The Stress Of The Covid
A: Stress can definitely increase PD symptoms. I have discussed the relationship between stress, anxiety and PD in general before, and COVID-19 has certainly created a very stressful environment for everyone. There can be stress related to contracting the virus as well as the anxiety and concern about returning to pre-pandemic activities now that life is starting to return to normal. The stress is being felt much more acutely by older adults and those with chronic medical issues, members of the population who have an increased risk of complications from COVID-19 infection. Many people with PD experience anxiety as a non-motor feature of their PD, and many are reporting that anxiety has increased since the pandemic began. To help minimize stress and normalize the current situation, be sure to establish daily routines, continue to exercise , and stay connected with family and friends in person if youre ready, or online or on the phone. Be patient with yourself and with others.
What Is Parkinsons Disease
Parkinsons disease is a nervous system disease that affects your ability to control movement. The disease usually starts out slowly and worsens over time. If you have Parkinsons disease, you may shake, have muscle stiffness, and have trouble walking and maintaining your balance and coordination. As the disease worsens, you may have trouble talking, sleeping, have mental and memory problems, experience behavioral changes and have other symptoms.
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How To Determine The Cause Of Symptoms22 Lectures 2hr 11min
- The Body is Overwhelmed
- The Cause of Symptoms is Always Multifaceted and ComplicatedPreview06:47
- What is Causing My Symptoms?1 question
- Toxins as a Causal Factor05:30
- Methods for Determining the Causes of Symptoms11:28
- Meridian Tracing: Use Meridians to Find the Cause04:21
- Reflexology: Get Clues about Causes from the Tender Places on Your Feet03:21
- Dentistry: Health of Your Teeth Reveal Imbalances in Your Body01:59
- BioAcoustics: Voice Profiling Reveals Imbalances05:26
- What is Wrong With Me?43 pages
- Biontology: Light that Passes Through Meridians Reveals Imbalances in Your Body01:50
- Four Methods to Muscle Test All By Yourself06:24
- Ask Your Body about the Causes of Your Symptoms04:03
- Muscle Testing: Determine the Cause by Asking Your Body38:53
- Causes “Check List” to be Used with the Audio Instructions in Lecture 4Preview2 pages
- Muscle Test Again the “Not Sure” Results when You First Muscle Tested Causes01:46
- Investigate and Research a Cause that is Calling Out for Your Attention02:39
Oligogm1 Penetration Into The Brain
To assesses the capability of OligoGM1 to reach the brain, five WT mice weighing 25g each were IP injected with OligoGM1 . A total of 6.5×107 dpm of OligoGM1 was gently dried under nitrogen and dissolved in BSS containing 2.5mg of cold OligoGM1. Each mouse was injected with 1.3×107 dpm of OligoGM1 and 0.5mg of cold OligoGM1 corresponding to 20mg/Kg of OligoGM1. Following 24h from the injection, animals were euthanized by heart perfusion with saline solution to remove the blood. Immediately the brain, without cerebellum, was collected, weighted and homogenized with 1.4mL of cold distilled water by 1min treatment with a mechanical stirrer at 4°C .
Determination of radioactivity
The value of the radioactivity determined in such way corresponded to volatile and non-volatile radioactivity . To establish the specific amount of volatile and non-volatile radioactivity 100L of brain homogenate were dried under nitrogen flux and resuspended in the same initial volume of cold distilled water and counted for radioactivity content as above. The difference between the value obtained from non-dry homogenate and dry homogenate corresponded to non-volatile radioactivity .
Metabolic stability
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Does Paraquat Cause Parkinsons Disease
As paraquat application has increased, so has the rate of Parkinsons disease diagnosed in the U.S. population. In fact, early-onset Parkinsons disease saw a 107% increase in diagnoses between 2017 compared to 2013, when paraquat started replacing Roundup.
The National Institute of Health completed the Farming and Movement Evaluation study in 2011. According to its results, you are almost twice as likely to develop Parkinsons disease if youve been exposed to paraquat or a similar herbicide such as rotenone. Another 2012 study found that people exposed to paraquat with a certain genetic variation had 11 times the risk of getting Parkinsons disease compared to the general population.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently in the process of reviewing the effects of paraquat and deciding whether to further regulating the product.
The highest risk of paraquat exposure is occupational, affecting farm and agricultural workers who mix, load, or apply paraquat or post-process paraquat-sprayed crops. That includes:
- Farm and field workers
- Agricultural inspectors
- Herbicide mixers and sprayers
But even if youre not a farm or agricultural worker, you can be exposed to the dangers of paraquat. A 2009 study found that living within 1600 feet of a facility that uses paraquat can increase your risk of Parkinsons disease by 75%, especially when exposed at a younger age. You could have been exposed to paraquat without even realizing it.
How Does It Develop
Your brain has full control over everything you do. Apart from other key functions, your brain controls different movements of your body. The region responsible for this job is known as the Substantia nigra, a Latin word meaning black substances.
This region of the brain is housed by a special group of cells called dopaminergic neurons. These are named dopaminergic because they produce dopamine, a chemical messenger released by the brain for controlling body movements.
In Parkinsons disease, these dopaminergic neurons start to die and the brain becomes unable to produce dopamine in sufficient quantity to governs body movements.
As a result, the body becomes stiff and slow in movement. In addition, some parts of the body, like hands, develop an uncontrolled shaking.
By the time these classical symptoms appear, the brain already lost 70% of its dopaminergic neurons.
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Ask Questions And Share Your Knowledge Of Parkinsons Disease In Our Forums
While I said earlier that PD is incurable, it is treatable. Treatable, however, will look different for you than it does for me or another patient. Some will be behind you in their progression of the disease, some ahead. It also depends on how each individual doctor believes or thinks the disease should be best treated. As you can see, many different factors come into play when a physician must come up with a custom treatment that best suits a patient.
Of the medications available that physicians choose for their patients, some of the more tolerated and beneficial seem to be Mirapex , Sinemet, Artane, Requip, and Comtan. Doctors might add other various medications be added to the mix depending on a patients symptoms and needs. These could include Azilect, Lexapro or another antidepressant , and Symmetrel, etc.
Each patient is unique and different and, therefore, patients needs and reactions to their treatment will be different. What works for one may not be tolerated or work well for another. Hopefully, the drug treatment is scaled to your individual needs and will treat your symptoms, but only your doctor can decide with you what is best and what is needed. New steps are taken every day, and progress is made at nearly the same rate worked toward a cure. Until then, it is best for patients to follow their regimented treatments until something better comes along. It will if we all keep fighting and do not give up.
Can Parkinsons Disease Be Prevented
Unfortunately, no. Parkinsons disease is long-term disease that worsens over time. Although there is no way to prevent or cure the disease , medications may significantly relieve your symptoms. In some patients especially those with later-stage disease, surgery to improve symptoms may be an option.
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What Are The Surgical Treatments For Parkinsons Disease
Most patients with Parkinsons disease can maintain a good quality of life with medications. However, as the disease worsens, medications may no longer be effective in some patients. In these patients, the effectiveness of medications becomes unpredictable reducing symptoms during on periods and no longer controlling symptoms during off periods, which usually occur when the medication is wearing off and just before the next dose is to be taken. Sometimes these variations can be managed with changes in medications. However, sometimes they cant. Based on the type and severity of your symptoms, the failure of adjustments in your medications, the decline in your quality of life and your overall health, your doctor may discuss some of the available surgical options.