Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative movement disorder of the central nervous system that insidiously forms, even starting subtly with a single tremor, progressing into slurred speech, loss of balance, and in the latest stage, delusions.
In patients with Parkinson’s, cells in the brain that control movement die. To learn more about it, click here.
As is usually the case with neglected diseases, there is no approved cure for Parkinson’s, but there are some meds that can be used to help symptoms. Added to the list of helpful drugs, could be a diabetes drug that German scientists deemed useful to relieve Parkinson’s symptoms. Not only this, but it might actually slow the progression of the disease.
How it works: There is a protein that some Parkinson’s patients lack that helps cells achieve energy balance, and without that protein, cells can die and Parkinson’s disease can set in. The diabetes drug metformin seems to regulate energy balance in damaged cells, thus preventing the cells from prematurely dying off and resulting in Parkinson’s.
This drug could very well be applied to the movement cells in Parkinson’s brains that die off and cause the disease to worsen.
While this drug works very specifically with people who have Parkinson’s due to this protein deficiency, it’s a part of the new age of personalized medicine; the new age of treating patients on an individual basis, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
