Pilot Study Suggests Parkinson’s Disease Progression Can Be Slowed

A pair of ultra-thin electrodes surgically implanted deep into the brain might slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease, according to five-year outcomes from a 30-patient randomized clinical trial conducted by investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Their report, published in the July 2020, issue of Neurology, presents the latest findings from the world’s first study of deep brain stimulation, or DBS, for early stage Parkinson’s, defined as within four years of disease onset. ….

In other five-year outcomes from the study, the DBS patients required considerably less of the medication used to manage symptoms of Parkinson’s. Also, “Patients receiving only optimal drug therapy had fifteenfold greater odds of needing multiple types of Parkinson’s disease medications,” said project leader Mallory Hacker, PhD, MSCI, assistant professor of Neurology. In a marked but uncertain trend falling just short of statistical significance, Parkinson’s patients receiving drugs alone were more than twice as likely to have clinically significant worsening of their motor symptoms.