As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Dr. James Parkinson’s groundbreaking essay of “The Shaking Palsy”, there seems to be a flurry of announcements of possible breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson’s.  Eight years ago, when I was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s, the prevailing theories all stated that PD was a disease that started with “dopamine-producing cell death in the brain.”  Sometimes the cause was genetic.  Other times exposure to pesticides or other chemicals were to blame.  But most of the time, there was no apparent cause.  Just 6 months ago, at the World Parkinson’s Congress, we began to hear about  different ways of looking at PD.

We have known for years, that Parkinson’s is a designer disease.  The progression can be very different for each person.  But now doctors and researchers are looking at PD as a group of syndromes, not just a single neurological condition that caused movement disorders.   Many other symptoms and diseases not typically considered Parkinson’s were now seen as part of PD.    There have been a lot of studies of possible treatments that seemed promising, but the hope for a cure still seemed elusive.  In fact, one of the speakers at the WPC, whom I believe was Tom Isaacs, quipped that the cure was always 5 years away, no matter what the research said.

But something has changed since then.  In the last few months, researchers are coming out with reports that Parkinson’s does not start in the brain, but may actually start in the gut.  Many say the culprit in some cases may be microbiomes in the gut. WOW!  If this is true, scientists at Caltech say it may mean that PD can be detected much earlier and drug treatments can be designed to remove those nasty little bacteria that are causing problems in our gut and our brain.  This treatment may also be more effective because medications

can easily be absorbed in the gut, unlike treatments for the brain, which is protected by the blood brain barrier.  There has been much written about this, and it is probably confusing for most of us who are not researchers.   I am not a biologist, or a scientist, but I do understand that treating the cause much earlier, if it is in fact in the gut, is much easier that treating the damaged neurons in the brain, especially since symptoms don’t appear until it is way too late to reverse the damage.

Here is a quick look at some of the other announcements over the last few weeks:

• Biomarkers  can be used to used to define disease subtypes.  “This precision-medicine approach will likely yield smaller, but well-defined, subsets of [Parkinson’s disease] amenable to successful neuroprotection.” according to Alberto Espay, MD, who conducted a study titled “Precision Medicine For Disease Modification In Parkinson Disease.”
• Last week the FDA approved Xadago   (Safinamide) for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who are taking levodopa but experiencing “off” episodes.
•  Also last week, researchers from the University of New Brunswick    found that an extract from the brown seaweed Alaria esculenta can prevent this conversion and, therefore, could be useful in avoiding the onset of the disease or delaying its progress.”  Ok.  Does this mean we should eat more sushi?
• A new study published in the Annals of Neurology suggests that redheads may carry a gene variant that increases the risk of both Parkinson’s disease (PD) and melanoma. Researchers have long known that having either PD or melanoma heightens the chances of developing the other condition, but it’s been unclear exactly why.  What if you are blonde and have had both, like I have???  I think this means I am in trouble….
• The Food and Drug Administration finally gave approval for 23andMe to sell to consumers genetic tests and their accompanying health risk reports for up to 10 diseases, including late-onset Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
• And finally, the New York Times declared that exercise is good for us old people.

All kidding aside, it seems that the big breakthrough may just come in less than 5 years, which would make all of us very happy.