Parkinson's Disease Essay

Parkinson disease (PD) is one of the most common neurologic disorders. and it affects approximately 1% of individuals older than 60 years old. Parkinson’s disease is a condition that progresses slowly by treatment. In addition, loss of pigmented dopaminergic neurons of the substantianigra pars compacta and the presence of Lewy bodies and Lewyneurites are the two major neuropathologic findings in Parkinson disease (Hauser, 2016).

In the past twenty years, many drugs have been developed to treat the disease. Although the cause of Parkinson's disease is still unknown, scientists have been developing methods of treatment and therapy. The idea is to replace dopamine in the brain, which is accomplished, to some extent, with the administration of L-Dopa. In conjunction with other drugs, L- Dopa "inhibits the enzymes that break down L-dopa in the liver, thus making a greater part of it available to the brain" (5). This treatment is very successful, but it only hinders the disease for a time and it is by no means a cure. That leaves us with stem-cells and the role they play in treatment of Parkinson's disease.

The purpose of this study was to see whether implanted embryonic dopamine neurons in Parkinson's disease patients led to a relieve of symptoms and also to see whether age played a role in whether the implanted neurons survived. All the participants were patients with Parkinson's disease who had if for at least seven years and had all three signs of Parkinson's disease. The patients were placed in groups of ten, some were given sham surgery and others transplantation. This was a double blind study. What was found was that patients who were 60 or younger actually responded better to the treatment and of the 40 patients only 39 actually completed the study, one of the patients died in a car crash before the study was finished the study lasted for a whole year. Also only patients who were 60 or younger reported positive feedback like showing actual improvement. The other patients were actually showing negative results which is not good because that meant that the disease was actually getting worse. The scores of one of the tests used showed some differences between the sham group and transplant group when not

Parkinson’s Disease is a long-term progressive neurodegenerative disease consisting of motor system impairment, neuropsychiatric, and nonmotor features. The disease is characterized by the following key clinical features: bradykinesia, resting tremor, postural instability, and rigidity. These symptoms are due to the diminishing of dopamine in the nigrostriatal pathway and substantia nigra, which causes inhibition of the thalamus decreasing excitatory input to the motor cortex.1 Along with the key manifestations an individual with Parkinson’s Disease will experience problems associated with the disease or the antiparkinson medications. These co-occurring problems are hallucinations, dementia, daytime sleepiness, fatigue, depression, and pyschosis.2 Psychosis is a common problem in Parkinson’s Disease, and is characterized by paranoid delusions and hallucinations that are visual in nature.2 Risk factors for psychosis consists of advancing age, dementia, sleep disorders, and high doses of antiparkinson drugs.1

Parkinson’s disease is known as one of the neurogenerative diseases which mostly occurs in people older than 60 years. According to a research of Lynn (2012), it is related to the fall of dopamine levels in either side

Parkinson's is an idiopathic, multifactorial neurodegenerative disease that attacks neurotransmitters in the brain called dopamine. Dopamine is concentrated in a specific area of the brain called the substantia nigra. The neurotransmitter dopamine is a chemical that regulates muscle movement and emotion. Dopamine is responsible for relaying messages between the substantia nigra and other parts of the brain to control body movement. The death of these neurotransmitters affects the central nervous system. The most common symptoms are movement related, including shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with posture. Behavioral problems may arise as the disease progresses. Due to the loss of dopamine,

Dopamine is a brain chemical/Neurotransmitter that work as messenger signal between the Substantia Nigra to the next relay station of the brain, the corpus striatum which helps to produce smooth coordinate movement and also plays a major role to help control muscle’s movement. With Parkinson’s disease, the brain cells that produce dopamine slowly die, which lead to decrease production of Dopamine. The loss of dopamine causes abnormal nerve firing with brain and the cells that control muscle’s movement by sending the messages to the muscles; due to this it becomes really hard to control muscles movement and cause tremors and various other symptoms such as rigidity and difficulty walking and performing daily tasks. Dopamine is not the only neurotransmitter involved in Parkinson’s Disease. Norepinephrine is very relatively close to dopamine and is also involved in Parkinson’s Disease. Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease have loss of nerve ending that produce norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is a major neurotransmitter for sympathetic nervous system, which control many autonomic functions of our body; it causes increase in blood pressure and heart rate. Loss of norepinephrine can help us explain the non-motor symptoms associated with Parkinson’s Disease such as fatigue, decrease in gastric stability and disruption in cognition. Parkinson’s Disease can be hereditary

Parkinson’s Disease-like pathologies are found in different organisms. However, the pathology do not necessarily result in Parkinson’s-like symptoms. In horses, dysfunction of the pituitary pars intermedia due to the loss of dopaminergic neurons within the hypothalamus is a characteristic of Cushing’s disease (Spelta, 2015). Currently, it is hypothesized that with age, oxidation within the hypothalamus causes the loss of dopaminergic neurons. In equine Cushing’s disease, proopiomelanocortin peptides (POMC), such as acetylcholine (ACTH), α-melanocyte-stimulation hormone (α-MSH), and ß-endorphin, are mass-produced due to the lack of dopamine inhibiting melanotrope cells of the pars intermedia within the pituitary gland (Toribio, 2012). With

Although Parkinson’s disease is a common neurological disease and researcher learn more and more about it each day, the disease is still considered largely idiopathic or of unknown cause. Although this is the case, it is widely known that Parkinson’s onset is due to the significant lack of a neurotransmitter named dopamine. (Clark, 2007) Dopamine is a substance that acts as a messenger between the corpus striatum and substania nigra to produce controlled and smooth movements. Most individuals who suffer from Parkinson’s show an immense lack of this substance, which explains the deteriorated control of movement. When there is a huge lack of dopamine or the amount is too low, the signals and communications between the substantia nigra and corpus striatum become inefficient, resulting in an impartment of ability to make smooth and controlled movements. The lower the levels of dopamine, the more symptoms begin to manifest. (Board, 2013) In addition

Parkinson’s disease is affected by the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons which is responsible to produce dopamine. Dopaminergic neurons have their cell bodies in substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) in basal ganglia (O’Sullivan and Schmitz, 2007). Basal ganglia are a collection of interconnected gray matter nuclear masses deep within the brain”. These gray matter masses are caudate, putamen, globus pallidus, subthalamic nucleus and the substantia nigra. Basal ganglia receive its input through striatum (O’Sullivan and Schmitz, 2007).

Charcot examined a large group of patients within Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, he had developed a way to observe tremors in action and at rest. “He noted that the patients with action tremor had accompanying features of weakness, spasticity, and visual disturbance. In contrast, those with rest tremor differed in having rigidity, slowed movements, a typical hunched posture, and very soft spoken.” (Goetz 2011) Charcot early tremor studies helped to establish Parkinson’s Disease through his very high publicized findings that neurological entity could be confidently be diagnosed. In 1957 a Swedish scientist Arvid Carlsson found out that dopamine in the brain region that is important for movement control. He showed that the levels of dopamine can be reduced in animals to cause symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease and also by giving the animals levodopa (L-dopa) to reverse the symptoms of PD. PD is second most common neurodegenerative after Alzheimer’s Disease and the most common movement disorder. Over 60,000 people here in the United States are diagnosed every year but they say the numbers can be much higher with undiagnosed people out there but over one million people live with Parkinson daily.10 million people worldwide live with Parkinson’s Disease and April 11th is World Parkinson’s Day. On April 11th, 2017 marked 200 years since James Parkinson publicized his essay.

“Stem cells can be used to heal the damage in the brain caused by Parkinson’s disease.” According to scientists in Sweden. They sad that their study on rats helped develop effective treatments for it. There is no known cure for the disease, but medicine and brain stimulation can help relieve symptoms. The disease is caused by the loss of nerve cells in the brain that make dopamine. To stimulate Parkinson’s disease, Lund University researchers killed dopamine producing neurons on one side of the rat’s brain. Then, they converted human embryonic stem cells into neurons that produce dopamine. This was injected into the rat’s brain, and researchers found signs that the damage was reversed. They said “… no human clinical traits of stem-cell-derived

The featured news I selected for this discussion is the article titled, “Parkinson’s: Asthma drugs may cut risk by a third” which was published on 01 September 2017 and written by Ana Sandoiu. The original author of the study is Shuchi Mittal and it was originally published in the Science journal (Sandoiu, 2017). The study consisted of utilizing molecule screening to find out that a class of drug used for treating asthma has the potential to reduce the genetic expression of the brain protein that builds up to cause Parkinson’s syndrome. The researchers then tested said drugs in mice and stem cells, producing more data that may lead to decreased risks of patients developing Parkinson’s disease while taking the anti-asthma medication.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder that affects over 1 million individuals in the US, and unfortunately, about 50,000 new cases are diagnosed yearly (Tarazi et al., 2014). Looking through different emerging treatments, I came across many, including pharmacotherapies, as well as surgical, and non-surgical procedures. While I believe many of these emerging treatments (such as viral vector gene therapy or stem cell therapy) are far from being approved in the US due to their invasive procedures or insufficient research, I however came across an emerging treatment that I presume will soon be approved in the US as opposed to many other ones. Therefore, in this research paper, I will discuss the emerging

In a normal brain neurons in the substantia nigra produce a chemical called dopamine that acts to control motor functions. In a person with Parkinson’s disease, there is insufficient dopamine and motor symptoms such as tremors, rigidity, problems with balance and bradykinesia can occur. According to the National Parkinson Foundation, four to six million people worldwide are estimated to have Parkinson’s Disease. In the United States alone, the incidence is estimated at fifty to sixty thousand new cases diagnosed each year. Additionally, the Center for Disease Control puts complications from Parkinson’s disease as the 14th leading cause of death. While there is no cure, the symptoms can be controlled