Parkinson's Disease Research Paper
Parkinson’s is a chronic, severe and debilitating brain disorder which cannot yet be cured: so what are the current available treatments to help relieve the disorder’s symptoms?
The Problem
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive, degenerative neurological disorder which is caused by nerve cell death in the midbrain called the substantia nigra which is responsible for producing neurotransmitters dopamine. The disease is named after the English doctor James Parkinson, who published the first detailed description in An Essay on the Shaking Palsy in 1817 after his observation of 6 cases [1-2]. An estimated 7 to 10 million people worldwide are living with PD. Even though a similar cell death is associated with ageing, for someone with the Parkinson’s …show more content…
FDOPA-PET imaging permits the follow-up of disease progression, the assessment of medical and surgical PD therapy strategies with possible neuroprotective properties.
(a) Pre transplant uptake study showing decrease nerve terminal density in the striatum, worse on left (right on picture), consistent with Parkinson’s disease.
(b) Post transplantation study with increase activity of marker at the site of micro-injections in left putamen.
Fig.7 this graphs illustrates the number of years the effect of the stem cells transplantation in the Lévesque’s research on the one sufferer who took part.
For the five years after the procedure, the patient’s motor scales improved by 80% for at least 36 months. Stem cells enhancement was dramatically noticeable. [12-13]
The baseline shoed the starting point of the experiment. As the sufferer was already taking medication before the transplantation, there was some improvement and so this is why the baseline is not from the black point of the graph. The blue line shows a placebo outcome however, there was no patent in which to give a placebo to and this was given as the expected placebo out come so that the results of this study could be
The Problem
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive, degenerative neurological disorder which is caused by nerve cell death in the midbrain called the substantia nigra which is responsible for producing neurotransmitters dopamine. The disease is named after the English doctor James Parkinson, who published the first detailed description in An Essay on the Shaking Palsy in 1817 after his observation of 6 cases [1-2]. An estimated 7 to 10 million people worldwide are living with PD. Even though a similar cell death is associated with ageing, for someone with the Parkinson’s …show more content…
FDOPA-PET imaging permits the follow-up of disease progression, the assessment of medical and surgical PD therapy strategies with possible neuroprotective properties.
(a) Pre transplant uptake study showing decrease nerve terminal density in the striatum, worse on left (right on picture), consistent with Parkinson’s disease.
(b) Post transplantation study with increase activity of marker at the site of micro-injections in left putamen.
Fig.7 this graphs illustrates the number of years the effect of the stem cells transplantation in the Lévesque’s research on the one sufferer who took part.
For the five years after the procedure, the patient’s motor scales improved by 80% for at least 36 months. Stem cells enhancement was dramatically noticeable. [12-13]
The baseline shoed the starting point of the experiment. As the sufferer was already taking medication before the transplantation, there was some improvement and so this is why the baseline is not from the black point of the graph. The blue line shows a placebo outcome however, there was no patent in which to give a placebo to and this was given as the expected placebo out come so that the results of this study could be