Here is an article about a study stating Nicotine as a drug treatment for Parkinson’s Disease.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2007) — The Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center has announced research showing that intermittent nicotine treatment reduces medication-induced dyskinesias by as much as 50 percent in models of Parkinson’s disease. Levodopa, the most common drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease, is initially very effective.

However, long-term treatment often lessens efficacy and causes multiple complications, including abnormal involuntary movements, called dyskinesias. These uncontrolled movements of the head and limbs tend to worsen over time and can become as debilitating as Parkinson’s disease itself.

Currently, there are only limited therapeutic options for dyskinesias, including reduction in levodopa dose, amantadine administration, and deep brain stimulation for a limited number of patients.

Most of the research on tobacco has focused on its detrimental health effects. Studies conducted over the last 40 years show that the incidence of Parkinson’s disease is about 50 percent less in smokers than in the general population. Recent studies in experimental models suggest that the nicotine in smoke may be responsible for this neuroprotective effect.

In addition, this is the first research to show that nicotine may also reduce levodopa-induced dyskinesias. With an estimated 1.5 million Parkinson’s disease patients in the United States, and levodopa being the top prescribed medication for Parkinson’s disease, this study has far-reaching implications for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

“Our hope is that this research represents a useful treatment strategy to reduce the dyskinesias that so many Parkinson’s disease patients suffer, “said Dr. Maryka Quik of the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale. “Reducing the side effects of levodopa makes it a much more effective and long-term treatment.”

Lead by senior research scientist, Maryka Quik, Ph.D., the research will be published in an upcoming issue of the Annals of Neurology.

(CBS) Noted neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks has found a way to combine two of his greatest passions – music and the brain.

“I think nothing can move one into other worlds as much as music,” he told
Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood.

Dr. Sacks, played by Robin Williams in the movie “Awakenings,” tried using music to arouse the catatonic victims of a rare brain disease.

The movie was based on a book and documentary about Sack’s patients in the 1960s.

“These were people who couldn’t generate any movement or any speech for themselves, sometimes until or unless they heard music,” Dr. Sacks said. “And then suddenly they’d be able to flow, to dance, to sing. It was miraculous to see them, amazing.”

A pianist himself, Dr. Sacks has spent years exploring the effects of music on the brain, chronicled in his latest book, “Musicophilia.”

“I see patients with all sorts of neurological conditions who could be greatly helped by music,” Dr. Sacks said. “People with Parkinson’s disease who can’t generate a sense of rhythm of their own, who can’t flow, who can’t move, but you give them rhythmical music and they can discover their own lost rhythm.”

At Beth Abraham Health Services in the Bronx, Parkinson’s patients like Jane Kirby walk cautiously without music, but with music, they step much more boldly.

Music not only stimulates movement. It can trigger memory in Alzheimer’s patients.

“There is something immensely tenacious about musical memory,” Dr. Sacks said. “And I think this is partly because musical memory or performing memory is lodged in parts of the brain which are not attacked by amnesia.”

Another example of the power of music is what Dr. Sacks calls “earworms.”

“I think everyone has the experience sometimes of a piece of music which catches their mind, which hooks them, which bores into them, and keeps repeating,” Sacks said. “If one looks at functional brain imaging, you will see a repetitive pattern going again and again across the cortex. I think it’s almost like a sort of little epilepsy or something like this. But music is more prone to repeat itself than anything else – more prone than words, I think.”

Dr. Sacks says humans are naturally musical.

“The ability to respond to rhythm seems to be exclusively human,” he said. “It appears spontaneously in every human child. It’s not seen in any other animal.”

And, he says, music is instrumental to our well being.

“There is something health-giving, I think, about music,” Dr. Sacks said. “One’s blood pressure comes down. One’s pulse is more regular. One’s muscles relax when one listens to music. One’s spirit is lifted and one is energized. I mean, music just has so much health-giving power.”

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/14/sunday/main3365434.shtml

By Maggie Schwarz

WASHINGTON, DC — October 11, 2007 — In a trial of patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease who were not optimally controlled with levodopa, prolonged-release ropinirole significantly reduced off time, and improved motor symptoms, according to research presented here at the 132nd Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association (ANA).

Researchers enrolled patients with Parkinson’s disease who were not controlled optimally with levodopa and randomised 202 patients to adjunctive treatment with prolonged-release ropinirole and 191 to placebo. Treatment was administered once daily for 24 weeks.

Lead author Rajesh Pahwa, MD, Director, Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder Center, and Laverne and Joyce Rider Professor of Neurology, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, Kansas, United States, presented the study results in a poster session on.

The initial dose of ropinirole was 2.0 mg daily and was titrated to a maximum of 24.0 mg daily. At 8.0 mg daily and at each subsequent increase, levodopa dose reduction was required.

The primary endpoint was a mean change in daily off time at week 24 (last observation carried forward [LOCF]). Post hoc analyses assessed mean changes from baseline in tremor, rigidity, and bradykinesia components of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) at week 24 LOCF.

Prolonged-release ropinirole reduced daily off time significantly compared with placebo at week 24 LOCF (P <.0001). At week 24 LOCF, significantly greater improvements were seen with ropinirole 24-hour compared with placebo, for changes in tremor (P =.0001), rigidity (P =.0003) and bradykinesia (P <.0001) from baseline.

Mean dose of ropinirole at the last assessment was 18.8 mg +- 6.3 mg daily.

Dr. Pahwa concluded that the dopamine agonist ropinirole, in a prolonged-release formulation, can improve difficult-to-control symptoms of advanced Parkinson’s disease, a stage of the disease notable for suboptimal control using levodopa.

WASHINGTON, DC — October 9, 2007 — Modafinil can reduced physical fatigue commonly seen in patients with Parkinson’s disease, researchers reported here at the 132nd Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association (ANA).

“It was very gratifying to find that modafinil improves physical fatigue in patients with Parkinson’s disease,” reflected study presenter Jau-Shin Lou, MD, Associate Professor of Neurology, University of Oregon Medical School, Portland, Oregon, United States.

Dr. Lou and colleagues undertook the study because Parkinson’s disease patients at all stages of the disease are known to have physical fatigue. Studies have shown that more than half of patients with Parkinson’s experience physical fatigue. “This is a well-documented phenomenon,” he lamented.

“Modafinil is approved for narcolepsy and has been shown to improve fatigue in multiple sclerosis, so we deduced that it was worth evaluating in Parkinson’s disease,” said Dr. Lou.

In their study, the researchers assessed fatigue levels in 19 Parkinson’s disease patients using the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI), a measurement tool that has been in use for about 20 years.

Nine patients who were on current Parkinson’s disease treatments were randomly assigned to modafinil 100 mg BID and 10 patients received placebo. Finger tapping and intermittent force generation were used to evaluate physical fatigue objectively and MFI was used to measure fatigue subjectively. Subjects completed the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the multidimensional McGill Quality of Life (MQOL).

Results showed that the modafinil group, but not the placebo group, showed increased finger tapping frequency (P <.05), increased tapping velocity (P <.05), less fatigue from finger tapping (P <.05), less general fatigue in the MFI (P <.05), less fatigue from intermittent force generation (P <.1), and less sleepiness (P <.1) from week 1 to 8. Both groups reported improved quality of life.

Dr. Lou concluded that, “at the regular dose used in narcolepsy, modafinil clearly reduced physical fatigue in Parkinson’s disease.”

He recommended that physicians prescribe modafinil to their patients with Parkinson’s disease who are suffering from fatigue.

“The agent can be used as an adjunctive medication to levodopa or a dopamine agonist,” he added.

Dr. Lou and his group hope to perform a larger trial, “but there’s no need to wait to start using modafinil,” he urged.

Source: http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/news/852571020057CCF68525736F006AEAF5