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parkinsons disease

Decoding Parkinson’s: Recognizing Early Signs and Empowering Action

by Dr. Shruthi R June 12, 2024

written by Dr. Shruthi R

Explore the complexities of Parkinson’s disease, from early symptoms to management strategies. Learn how to take control of your health journey with expert insights.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system that affects movement. It develops gradually, sometimes starting with a barely noticeable tremor in just one hand. But while tremor may be the most well-known sign of Parkinson’s disease, the disorder also commonly causes stiffness or slowing of movement.

In the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, your face may show little or no expression, or your arms may not swing when you walk. Your speech may become soft or slurred. Parkinson’s disease symptoms worsen as your condition progresses over time.

Causes of Parkinson’s Disease

The exact cause of Parkinson’s disease is unknown, but several factors appear to play a role, including:

Genes: Researchers have identified specific genetic mutations that can cause Parkinson’s disease, but these are rare except in rare cases with many family members affected by Parkinson’s disease.
Environmental triggers: Exposure to certain toxins or environmental factors may increase the risk of later Parkinson’s disease, but the risk is relatively small.
Alpha-synuclein accumulation: Clumps of specific substances within brain cells are microscopic markers of Parkinson’s disease. These are called Lewy bodies.
Risk factors: Risk factors for Parkinson’s disease include age, sex (men are more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than women), heredity, and exposure to toxins.

Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease symptoms and signs may vary from person to person. Early signs may be mild and go unnoticed. Symptoms often begin on one side of your body and usually remain worse on that side, even after symptoms begin to affect both sides. Parkinson’s signs and symptoms may include:

Tremor: A tremor, or shaking, usually begins in a limb, often your hand or fingers. You may notice a back-and-forth rubbing of your thumb and forefinger, known as a pill-rolling tremor. One characteristic of Parkinson’s disease is a tremor of your hand when it is relaxed (at rest).
Slowed movement (bradykinesia): Over time, Parkinson’s disease may slow your movement, making simple tasks difficult and time-consuming. Your steps may become shorter when you walk, or you may find it difficult to get out of a chair. Also, your feet may stick to the floor as you try to walk, making it difficult to move forward.
Rigid muscles: Muscle stiffness may occur in any part of your body. The stiff muscles can be painful and limit your range of motion.
Impaired posture and balance: Your posture may become stooped, or you may have balance problems as a result of Parkinson’s disease.
Loss of automatic movements: You may have a decreased ability to perform unconscious movements, including blinking, smiling, or swinging your arms when you walk.
Speech changes: You may speak softly, quickly, slur, or hesitate before talking. Your speech may be more of a monotone rather than with the usual inflections.
Writing changes: It may become hard to write, and your writing may appear small.
Loss of smell: You may experience a reduced ability to smell odors or detect flavors in food.

Treatment and Management

While there is currently no cure for Parkinson’s disease, medications, surgery, and lifestyle modifications can help manage its symptoms. Medications can help manage problems with walking, movement, and tremor. In some cases, surgery may be recommended to regulate certain regions of the brain and improve symptoms.

Prevention and Outlook

Although there is no proven way to prevent Parkinson’s disease, some research suggests that caffeine consumption, smoking, and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk. Regular exercise and maintaining a healthy lifestyle may also help.

In conclusion, Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system that affects movement. While there is currently no cure, various treatments can help manage symptoms and improve quality of life. If you or a loved one are experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, it’s important to speak to a healthcare professional for proper diagnosis and treatment.

June 12, 2024 0 comment

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Altered speech may be the first sign of Parkinson’s disease: Research

by Medically Speaking Team January 25, 2023

written by Medically Speaking Team

Using speech data, researchers aimed to discover early indications of Parkinson’s disease. The researchers employed artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse and interpret voice signals in their study, where computations and diagnoses are accomplished in seconds rather than hours.

Rytis Maskeliunas, a Lithuanian researcher from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), and colleagues from the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LSMU) attempted to identify early indications of Parkinson’s disease using speech data. Parkinson’s disease is often characterised by a loss of motor function, such as hand tremors, muscular rigidity, or balance issues.

According to Maskeliunas, a researcher at KTU’s Department of Multimedia Engineering, as motor activity decreases, so does the function of the vocal cords, diaphragm, and lungs: “Changes in speech often occur even earlier than motor function disorders, which is why the altered speech might be the first sign of the disease.”

According to Professor Virgilijus Ulozas, at the Department of Ear, Nose, and Throat at the LSMU Faculty of Medicine, patients with early-stage of Parkinson’s disease, might speak in a quieter manner, which can also be monotonous, less expressive, slower, and more fragmented, and this is very difficult to notice by ear. As the disease progresses, hoarseness, stuttering, slurred pronunciation of words, and loss of pauses between words can become more apparent.
Taking these symptoms into account, a joint team of Lithuanian researchers has developed a system to detect the disease earlier.

“We are not creating a substitute for a routine examination of the patient — our method is designed to facilitate early diagnosis of the disease and to track the effectiveness of treatment,” says KTU researcher Maskeliunas.

According to him, the link between Parkinson’s disease and speech abnormalities is not new to the world of digital signal analysis — it has been known and researched since the 1960s. However, as technology advances, it is becoming possible to extract more information from speech.

In their study, the researchers used artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse and assess speech signals, where calculations are done and diagnoses made in seconds rather than hours. This study is also unique — the results are tailored to the specifics of the Lithuanian language, in this way expanding the AI language database.

Speaking about the progress of the study, Kipras Pribuisis, lecturer at the Department of Ear, Nose, and Throat at the LSMU Faculty of Medicine, emphasises that it was only carried out on patients already diagnosed with Parkinson’s: “So far, our approach is able to distinguish Parkinson’s from healthy people using a speech sample. This algorithm is also more accurate than previously proposed.”

In a soundproof booth, a microphone was used to record the speech of healthy and Parkinson’s patients, and an artificial intelligence algorithm “learned” to perform signal processing by evaluating these recordings. The researchers highlight that the algorithm does not require powerful hardware and could be transferred to a mobile app in the future.
“Our results, which have already been published, have a very high scientific potential. Sure, there is still a long and challenging way to go before it can be applied in everyday clinical practice,” says Maskeliunas.

According to the researcher, the next steps will be to increase the number of patients in order to collect more data and to see whether the suggested algorithm is superior to alternative approaches used for early Parkinson’s diagnosis. Furthermore, it will be important to test the algorithm not just in laboratory-like surroundings, but also at the doctor’s office or the patient’s home.

January 25, 2023 0 comment

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AI teams with fMRI to advance the state of deep brain stimulation

by Medically Speaking Team June 1, 2021

written by Medically Speaking Team

Researchers have combined functional MRI with machine learning to guide deep brain stimulation (DBS) for patients with Parkinson’s disease.

The system hit 88% accuracy at optimizing stimulation settings, as confirmed by brain-response patterns on the neuroimaging as well as visibly observable symptom improvement in two separate sets of patients.

The project was conducted at the University of Toronto and is described in a study published May 24 in Nature Communications.

Neuroscientist Alexandre Boutet, PhD (candidate), neurosurgeon Andres Lozano, MD, and colleagues built their AI model on prospectively acquired fMRI data from 67 Parkinson’s patients.

They obtained the data during both optimal and suboptimal stimulation procedures.

The team came to the 88% accuracy finding by testing the system on 39 patients. In the process they demonstrated that fMRI brain responses to DBS in Parkinson’s patients “could represent an objective biomarker of clinical response. … Upon further validation with additional studies, these findings may open the door to functional imaging-assisted DBS programming.”

Offering a quick primer on DBS, Boutet and co-authors write:

Deep brain stimulation has become a standard of care therapy for movement disorders, particularly Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and dystonia, and is being investigated in psychiatric and cognitive disorders including major depressive disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. DBS involves placing an electrode to deliver electrical stimulation within a dysfunctional neural circuit to suppress aberrant activity and/or drive an underactive network. Despite its recognized benefits, the therapeutic mechanism of action of DBS remains incompletely understood.

In the Toronto study, the patients included some who had previously benefited by deep brain stimulation and others for whom participation in the project represented a first time undergoing the therapy.

Boutet and co-authors suggest their fMRI/machine learning technique might serve as an objective clinical tool for programming DBS devices.

Poor programming, they point out, has been called out as a likely culprit in the failure of DBS to prove efficacious against clinical depression.

“Our results show that fMRI can rapidly define the optimal DBS in Parkinson’s patients,” they write. “Obtaining DBS-induced fMRI brain signatures associated with optimal clinical benefits will not only allow us to obtain a better understanding of the mechanism of action of DBS but could also facilitate individualized medicine for our patients and may represent a step toward the possibility of autonomous, closed-loop DBS programming.”

June 1, 2021 0 comment