Stem Cell Treatment for Parkinson’s

It is a disorder that affects the nervous system and the parts of the body controlled by the nerves, affects movement and usually causes tremors.

What is it?

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system whose main characteristic is the progressive death of neurons in a part of the brain.

The most important consequence of this neuronal loss is a marked decrease in the brain availability of dopamine, the main substance synthesized by these neurons, causing a dysfunction in the regulation of the main brain structures involved in the control of movement.

Signs & Symptoms

Symptoms mainly affect the patient’s motor function, starting on one side of the body. The most characteristic are:

  • Generalized clumsiness with slowness in performing movements. 
  • Poor spontaneous motility.
  • Resting tremor.
  • Stiffness.

Typical manifestations are also the facial inexpressiveness, the scarcity of automatic movements such as blinking or brachiation when walking, the inclination of the trunk forward during the march, etc.

 

diagnosis

Parkinson’s disease is a clinically diagnosed disease. The neurologist makes the diagnosis based on a detailed anamnesis with the data provided by the patient and his family and the findings of the physical examination. It is not strictly necessary to perform complementary tests.

Complications

The evolution of Parkinson’s disease is very variable so that in some patients the neurodegenerative process progresses very slowly while in others it may be faster. In general, as the duration of the disease increases, the initial movement disorders become more intense in the hemibody where they started and manifest in the other hemibody.

In addition, other symptoms may appear such as:

  • Impaired gait with difficulty primarily in its onset and in turning.
  • Speech disorder.
  • Mood disorders such as depression or apathy.
  • Autonomic dysfunction (urinary urgency and incontinence, constipation, dizziness when getting out of bed or from low places).
  • Sleep disturbances such as insomnia, nightmares with gesticulation and vocalizations, etc.
  • Anosmia (loss of smell).
  • Alteration of rebalancing reflexes and falls.
  • In some cases, after many years of evolution, cognitive deterioration.

Stem Cells

With no current therapies to recover from critical cell death, MSCs provide an alternative route to potentially restore a disease-free state.

Mesenchymal stem cells are considered an attractive therapeutic candidate because of their high self-renewal capacity, lack of adverse effects in allogeneic versus autologous transplants, high ethical acceptability, and no teratoma formation. 

Intravenous MSC therapy can be considered an ideal source for replacing lost cells in degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, since the treatment is based on the cells’ potential for differentiation into dopaminergic neurons.