New Delhi: Adaptive and personalised deep brain stimulation can be more effective in controlling symptoms of Parkinson’s disease than standard deep brain stimulation (DBS), an established treatment for the disorder, a new study has found. Researchers from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have developed an implantable device that has the potential to control symptoms in Parkinson’s disease patients while they carry out daily activities. The device can help treat motor problems, such as shaking, difficulty in moving limbs and uncontrolled movements during the day, and insomnia at night.
Parkinson’s disease, which affects more than 10 million people worldwide, results in tremors, stiffness, mood disorders, impaired balance and insomnia, and cannot be optimally controlled with just medications. DBS, a neurosurgical procedure, can complement medicines by delivering electrical signals to certain areas of the brain to adjust for chemical imbalances in neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, which lead to insomnia. According to the findings published last week in the journal Nature Medicine , the device works on adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS) , a neuromodulation technique (technology that alters nerve activity by delivering electrical signals or pharmaceutical agents) in which stimulation parameters are adjusted in accordance with the clinical and neurological state of the patient.
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