Drug trial aims to stop Parkinson’s
Violent dreams could be an early warning sign of Parkinson’s disease and scientists are trialling a potential treatment.
Parkinson’s disease fact file
Parkinson’s causes symptoms such as tremors in the hands, slow movement, poor balance and coordination, and speech problems.
More than 150,000 Australians are living with the disease, which is most common in people over 60.
About 15% of cases are hereditary, and the rest may be associated with environmental factors such as exposure to pesticides or heavy metals.
Age is a key risk factor, and men are twice as likely to be diagnosed as women.
Other symptoms of prodromal Parkinson’s include loss of sense of smell, difficulty distinguishing between different shades of the same colour, a slight shake in the hands, and handwriting that has become smaller.
A drug trial underway at Macquarie University is taking advantage of an early warning sign of Parkinson’s in the hope of stopping the disease before it causes permanent damage to patients’ brains.
While Parkinson’s is not considered a fatal condition, it seriously affects patients’ quality of life and increases the risk of life-threatening falls and infections.
Research has identified that inflammation in the brain is a key driver of the disease before the debilitating motor symptoms begin to appear.
That’s why research at Macquarie University is exciting global medical interest and raising hopes of possibly defeating the disease.
In a partnership with Sydney biotech company Syntara, Macquarie’s Professor of Cognitive Neurology, Simon Lewis, is leading a world-first clinical trial of a drug originally intended as a treatment for fatty liver disease and eye disease but was found to be effective in reducing inflammation in rats’ brains.
Professor Lewis hopes the drug will also successfully treat the neuroinflammation that drives Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers say violent dreams could indicate signalling issues in the brain and be a warning sign of Parkinson’s.
For the drug trial, Professor Lewis is working with people aged between 50 and 80 who are regularly having violent dreams where they are punching, kicking, or screaming, but not sleepwalking.
Professor Lewis said it appears that damage to the brain’s neural pathways in the earliest stages of Parkinson’s disease causes inflammation in the brain. The implications could be devastating.
“If we can’t explain why somebody starts acting out their dreams after the age of 50, their chances of going on and get Parkinson’s disease, or disease like Parkinson’s is 140 times greater than the average person in the population,” he said.
Researchers have found that over a 12-year period, about 75% of people with isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder go on to develop either Parkinson’s or a related condition.
The drug trail aims to see whether a pill can combat the inflammation, which is a key driver of early disease.
“We want to identify a pathway to a cure so we’re using a short exposure to a drug that we think will reduce the neuroinflammation,” Professor Lewis said.
Once the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s appear, including tremors and trouble walking, there has already been substantial loss of more than 50% of the brain’s dopamine-producing cells.
The researchers want to “cure” these conditions before people start losing those brain cells.
John Clowes, 73, is a patient who acts out violent dreams, and has joined the trial. Both his grandfather and half-brother had Parkinson’s, but at the time he did not realise the disease might be hereditary.
The first indication that something was changing was a shift in his dreams about three years ago.
“I was living out my dreams for the first time, and they were very combative,” he said. “I was fighting people, and it was almost like the script to a movie.
“I had never remembered my dreams before, but now I could remember them. My wife was noticing too, because I was thrashing around in bed and waking her up. It might happen once or twice a week and then not again for months.”
Mr Clowes was diagnosed with REM sleep behaviour disorder.
After learning this could be an early sign of Parkinson’s, and that a drug trial was available, he decided to volunteer.
“If there’s a chance that this could work, and it could help other people, that would be excellent,” he said.
Related reading: 9News, Brisbane Times
