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Experimental treatment for Parkinson's disease - stimulating spinal cord

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 8:25 am
by srgraves01
Some new research on Parkinson's disease using experimental treatment using Parkinson's disease uses electrical stimulation to the spinal cord. I found a video that showed some successful treatment in mice. I saw another one a few weeks ago that showed successful treatment in humans but I couldn't find it today. Here is the link to the a video about electrical stimulation in mice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b6OElzJlMg It seems like it might be possible for something like this to work for RLS. This might be worth looking into.

Steve

Re: Experimental treatment for Parkinson's disease - stimulating spinal cord

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 6:00 pm
by stjohnh
That would be great. However, Parkinson's disease is quite a bit different from RLS. Both respond to DAs, but Parkinson's patients have dopamine deficiency, RLS patients have dopamine excess. There is an important iron component to RLS, not a part of Parkinson's. I'm sure there are others, but while both are movement disorders, there is not much overlap. Sadly, because there is lots of research on Parkinson's.

Re: Experimental treatment for Parkinson's disease - stimulating spinal cord

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 9:35 pm
by Rustsmith
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is becoming a common treatment for Parkinsons. The latest issue of the AARP magazine even reported on a new DBS controller and stated that where DBS used to be reserved for the treatment of end stage Parkinsons, it is not being used for newly diagnosed patients. There have been several papers written about the improvement in the RLS symptoms of some Parkinsons patients who also have RLS symptoms.

This is all very interesting because there have been four cases that I know about where DBS has been used to treat severe RLS cases in patients who do not also have Parkinsons. Two surgeries were done in Houston and have been reported in the literature. I understand that two other surgeries have been done in Australia. All four saw significant improvement in the form of reduced medication levels and reduced RLS issues. Where DBS is becoming "routine" for Parkinsons, it is still very much in the research stages for RLS.

Re: Experimental treatment for Parkinson's disease - stimulating spinal cord

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 9:54 pm
by srgraves01
Previously, Parkinson's was primarily treated in the brain with the deep brain stimulation as you mentioned. This new treatment focuses on the spinal cord. It may be that once signals get to the spinal cord, that some of the differences between different diseases becomes less relevant. It would also be interesting if the deep brain stimulation could be applied as a treatment for RLS as well as Parkinsons.

Re: Experimental treatment for Parkinson's disease - stimulating spinal cord

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 4:07 am
by SquirmingSusan
I hope they figure out something to better treat RLS as well as Parkinson's. I know so many people with Parkinson's, and not a one has had deep brain stimulation. I don't know if it's an insurance thing or it's too risky or another reason.