Prognosis for Parkinson's: Number of Treatment Options on the Market

Parkinson's Disease can have debilitating effects when it comes to walking and coordination.

Jennifer Gruenberg hasn't had those effects, but she has started feeling some of the invisible symptoms, including sleep problems and mood disorders.

"Right now, Parkinson's is sort of eating up my day, every day because I don't feel good when it comes time to take my next pill," said Gruenberg. "In the period when the pill is wearing off, my head feels foggy. My body is achy and I know that I've taken another pill but it could take 45 minutes to an hour to kick in."

That's one of the big problems of the medications that are on the market. A main area of clinical trials and study is looking at the best medications.

"There's a variety of drug studies looking at both motor symptom control as well as non-motor symptoms. Many of these are looking at new formulations or combinations of drugs that we already use to see if we can get a little bit of incremental benefit. But there are some exciting advances where we're looking at brand new approaches to trying to slow the progression of the disease," said University of Rochester Medical Center Deep Brain Stimulator Program Clinical Director Dr. Michelle Burack.

But there can be side effects, such as nausea or sleep disturbance, which doctors are also looking at ways to combat. The latest work has been with gene therapy and stem cell treatments.

"Those are still in the very early, highly experimental, still need to work out the kinks with safety issues for some of those treatments. There's surgeries, both deep brain stimulation. There's some centers now looking at using focused ultrasound to basically lesion or injure the part of the brain that's sending the abnormal signals," said Burack.

Deep brain stimulation has also been found to be very effective for some patients' tremor symptoms.

"Deep brain stimulation is basically a pacemaker for the brain. Our neuroscientists have figured out what changes in the whole brain circuit that controls movement are happening. So loss of dopamine causes abnormal signaling in multiple other nodes of the brain. So just like a heart pacemaker we use electricity to treat abnormal rhythms in the heart, we use deep brain stimulators to correct abnormal rhythms in the brain," said Burack.

Doctors are also looking at incorporating telemedicine into care because symptoms that happen at home, often don't happen in the doctor's office.

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Prognosis for Parkinson's: Number of Treatment Options on the Market