Can I Participate in Clinical Research for Parkinson's Disease?

Neurological disorders are often complicated problems to manage, and Parkinson’s disease is an illness that limits your ability to function in most every part of your life over time. Sadly it’s also a neurological disorder on the rise, with roughly 1 million people in the U.S. struggling with it and 90,000 more being diagnosed with it annually.

Research is constantly being done to better understand how Parkinson’s disease works and what can be done to cure it, including clinical trials to gather more data on the illness. If you’re interested in being part of the solution for improving treatment of this debilitating condition, let’s examine more facts about it, the role research plays, and how you can help.

Residents in the area of Norwood, Anderson, and Westside, Ohio, and Crestview Hills, Kentucky, looking for ways to help clinical research can find answers with the medical team at Riverhills Neuroscience.

Facts about Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease is a form of neurodegenerative disorder that affects neurons in key areas of your brain, in particular the substantia nigra, a basal ganglia structure in the midbrain where dopamine producing neurons are located. While the cause is still unknown, it’s believed that both genetic and environmental factors play a role in its development.

It doesn’t produce symptoms right away, as the disease progresses over time. While the overall symptoms vary from person to person, they generally include tremors, rigidity of movement, gait and balance problems, and slow and limited movement. Currently the disease is incurable, but treatment options include a range of lifestyle changes, surgeries, and medications.

The importance of research to treat it

As mentioned earlier, Parkinson’s disease is affecting more people each year, and the effects of it in later stages are simply debilitating, creating problems with everything from autonomic movements to radical changes in how you speak. Research has been essential to getting a much deeper understanding of what’s happening in people with the disease, which can enhance our knowledge of possible causes and lead to more effective methods to treat it. 

Through genetic studies, finding genetic mutations, cellular and molecular pathways, and discovering the mitochondrial dysfunction involved in the disease, we get inch slowly closer to better options to treat Parkinson’s disease and hopefully find a cure.

Requirements for participating in research

These studies are done to assess possible options for treatment, and volunteers are key to getting data to determine their effectiveness. We perform studies here for Parkinson’s and many other diseases, and the requirements to be a part of it will vary, but they will depend on a few key factors:

• Treatment history: what you’ve been treated for before can affect how well you respond to any possible medications we’re testing

• Age: different studies also call for testing in specific age groups to see how certain demographics handle a possible new treatment

• Sex: some studies also examine the effects of a new medication in men or women

• Current medications: we need to know what drugs you’re currently being prescribed to find out if there are any adverse reactions that will affect the dataset

When research studies are available we don’t just send out emails regarding them, so if you want to know what research we’re currently doing for Parkinson's disease, contact the team at Riverhills Neuroscience online or by phone today.