A new treatment that doctors are using is injecting a fluid that has been developed directly into patient’s brains that contains billioins of virsuses, the fluid delivers a gene that re-establishes the normal chemistry in the brain.This is the first study to use gene therapy on advanced cases of Parkinson’s and early results are impressive.
The small testing phase has seemed to do very well. Twelve were injected with the fluid and about half showed greater mobility, their tremors decreased, and they were more able to live more independently. These are some pretty good improvements–kind of exciting. Even more promising, one year after the injections, the majority of patients continued to improve, hinting that their brains may actually be trying to reverse the damage caused by the disease.
The two things that this study needs is a larger study group and more time to see the long-time effects. A few days ago I blogged about some of the different treatments that were going on and this is another one I’ll have to keep an extra close eye on.
