Parkinsonism & related disorders
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Dec 2012
Palliative care for advanced Parkinson disease: an interdisciplinary clinic and new scale, the ESAS-PD.
Palliative care provides a holistic approach to symptom relief using a multidisciplinary team approach to enhance quality of life throughout the entire course of a particular illness. The care team consists of movement disorders neurologist, a palliative care physician, a wound care nurse, a spiritual counselor and a care coordinator. Palliative care concepts were applied to a group of advanced Parkinson disease (PD) patients in a dedicated Palliative Care Clinic. ⋯ ESAS-PD is a quick, effective scale for assessment of late stage PD symptoms. Scores are sensitive to intervention, and therefore have potential clinical utility for physicians and other healthcare providers. Advanced PD patients have a similar degree of symptoms as metastatic cancer patients, respond to treatment in a similar way, and therefore should have access to palliative care services.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Dec 2012
Clinical TrialUnilateral caudal zona incerta deep brain stimulation for Parkinsonian tremor.
The subthalamic nucleus is currently the target of choice in deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease (PD), while thalamic DBS is used in some cases of tremor-dominant PD. Recently, a number of studies have presented promising results from DBS in the posterior subthalamic area, including the caudal zona incerta (cZi). The aim of the current study was to evaluate cZi DBS in tremor-dominant Parkinson's disease. ⋯ Unilateral cZi DBS seems to be safe and effective for patients with severe Parkinsonian tremor. The effects on rigidity and bradykinesia were, however, not as profound as in previous reports of DBS in this area.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Sep 2012
Randomized Controlled TrialThermal and mechanical pain thresholds in patients with fluctuating Parkinson's disease.
Study results evaluating pain thresholds in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) vary widely. Thus, we designed our study to determine the effects of levodopa on the thresholds of pressure (PPT), heat (HPT) and cold pain (CPT) in PD patients with motor fluctuations (18 patients: 10 men, 8 women; age: 65 ± 10 years; mean disease duration: 11.6 ± 6 years), six of whom (33%) reported pain related to their disease. We compared these thresholds in patients in the ON and OFF states with those in 18 age- and sex-matched controls. ⋯ Pain thresholds were no different in PD patients in the ON or OFF state (P > 0.10), and the existence of pain did not influence the results. We detected mechanical and thermal pain hypersensitivity in PD patients in the OFF state, and levodopa administration did not increase these thresholds. Thus, while dopamine may modulate pain responses, other mechanisms are likely to be implicated in the modulation of these pain responses in PD patients.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Sep 2012
Immediate effects of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus on nonmotor symptoms in Parkinson's disease.
To assess the immediate effects of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) on nonmotor symptoms (NMS) in Parkinson's disease (PD). ⋯ STN-DBS does not have major immediate effects on frequencies of NMS, but improves most NMS particularly psychiatric symptoms such as depression, anxiety and fatigue in a variable subset of patients. There is no indication that STN-DBS worsens NMS.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Sep 2012
Grey matter volume correlates of cerebrospinal markers of Alzheimer-pathology in Parkinson's disease and related dementia.
Regional brain grey matter volume (GMV) reductions and abnormal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of τ and Aβ, extensively studied as biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease (AD), have also been reported in Parkinson's disease (PD) and related dementia (PDD). However, the relationship between these CSF and MRI biomarkers in PD and PDD remains unexplored. We studied these associations in 33 PD patients (18 with no dementia [PDND]; 15 fulfilling PDD criteria) and 12 neurologically unimpaired controls, with neuropsychological assessment, CSF ELISA studies, and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis of high-field brain MRI. ⋯ The correlations in the entire PD sample fitted with a linear model and were thus unlikely to have been driven solely by the PDD subgroup. Additionally, an association between both the CSF markers and the CSF-associated GMV reductions with several neuropsychological functions was found. We interpret that CSF markers of AD pathology are associated with VBM-measures of brain atrophy in PD-related dementia and within the PD cognitive continuum, and deserve further attention as putative biomarkers of cognitive impairment and dementia in PD.