Parkinson’s disease: types and symptoms
Researchers have had a hard time finding Parkinson’s treatments because this is a very complex disease. As such, it has many related symptoms and its prognosis depends on both your genetics and environmental factors. This disease changes the brain’s physiology, particularly dopamine receptors. Parkinson’s slowly generates neuronal inclusions -called Lewy bodies- and eventually shuts down specific parts of some neurons.
During early stages of the disease, patients can show slowed movement and impaired posture, as well as speech and writing changes [3]. However, those motor symptoms are also accompanied by non-motor symptoms like pain, fatigue, low blood pressure, and eventually depression, dementia, anxiety and psychosis [4].
Types of Parkinson’s
While it was previously thought this was a single condition, now we know there are at least 3 forms of Parkinson’s, plus other conditions related to it. Treatment and symptoms depend on the specific form you intend to treat:
- Idiopathic Parkinson’s: this is the traditional condition we recognize as Parkinson’s disease. The most common symptoms are rigidity and tremor, and most people diagnosed with Parkinson’s have this type. As the term indicates, idiopathic parkinsonism has unknown causes but it is the better-studied of them all.
- Vascular Parkinsonism: these patients develop Parkinson-like symptoms after having cardiovascular issues that affect the brain’s blood supply. This condition usually also involves other neurological issues like sleep problems, mood swings and memory problems. Treatment is based around the specific symptoms.
- Drug-induced Parkinsonism: some drugs cause Parkinson-like symptoms, but usually they don’t progress further. Generally, symptoms disappear once the drug is stopped.
Since this disease has a slow onset, Parkinson’s patients usually don’t seek help until the condition is quite advanced. This contributes to the difficulty treating it.
Current Parkinson’s treatment is mainly based around dopaminergic drugs. These increase dopamine-related activity in the brain, which is the main source of symptoms for Parkinson’s patients. However, the most common drugs used for treatments improve motor symptoms but don’t affect non-motor issues.
Unfortunately, non-motor symptoms tend to have a greater impact on patient’s quality of life and don’t recede with traditional medication. Luckily, new research points out at CBD as a possible complement for Parkinson’s treatment.
Studies on Parkinson’s treatment
Several studies have looked to see if Cannabidiol has some therapeutic effects on non-motor systems [2], and these studies have found that CBD could have neuroprotective effects. This contrasts with current Parkinson’s treatments available, that don’t have neuroprotective capabilities and instead focus on enhancing dopamine concentration.
However, a recent pilot study examined if CBD could help patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease. This study took 6 diagnosed patients with advanced psychotic symptoms that didn’t respond to lowering their antiparkinsonian medication. Using high CBD doses paired with the rest of their medication, patients showed significant reduction in psychotic symptoms and motor signs without severe side effects [2].
Other studies show a definite link between CBD administration and a reduction in psychiatric symptoms, including anxiety and dementia [2]. As such, CBD could greatly improve Parkinson’s patients’ quality of life by lowering psychiatric symptoms. Of course, this would only be possible when patients don’t have psychiatric comorbidities, like Alzheimer’s or dementia, that aren’t related to Parkinson’s.
In spite of the promising outcomes, studies focusing on the possibilities of CBD treatment for Parkinson’s patients are still scarce. Plus, sample sizes are still relatively small when compared with the population living with the disease.
Luckily, more and more research groups are trying to discover the possible effects of cannabinoids on Parkinson’s disease treatment. We want to be clear that CBD is not a cure for Parkinson’s. It can
possibly help with symptoms, and more research needs to be conducted.
What do you think? What’s your experience with this? ..and be sure to forward this to anyone you think needs to see this!
References
- Statistics. Parkinson’s foundation. Available here.
- Ferreira-Junior NC, Campos AC, Guimarães FS, Del-Bel E, Zimmermann PMDR, Brum Junior L, Hallak JE, Crippa JA, Zuardi AW. (2020). Biological bases for a possible effect of cannabidiol in Parkinson’s disease. Braz J Psychiatry. 42(2):218-224. doi: 10.1590/1516-4446-2019-0460. Epub 2019 Jul 15. PMID: 31314869.
- Parkinson’s disease. Symptoms and causes. Mayo clinic. Available here.
- Non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s UK. Available here.
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