Parkinson‘s disease

Constipation is one of the most common non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. The pathogenetic mechanisms of constipation, diagnostic criteria, approaches to investigations and treatment are discussed in the paper.

Genetic factors underlie the pathological processes that cause the manifestation of a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases. The pathological expansion of unstable trinucleotide repeats is known to lead monogenic neurological diseases such as Huntington's disease, Kennedy's disease, spinocerebellar ataxia, and others. However, the latest data suggests individuals with intermediate allele (IA) repeat length have a risk of developing common neurological phenotype, for example, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease...

OBJECTIVE: To study clinical and epidemiological characteristics of Parkinson's disease (PD) in Baku. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The authors retrospectively collected information on the newly diagnosed and all patients diagnosed with PD in outpatient clinics in Baku in 2010-2019. A prospective observation was carried out in the clinic of the Department of Neurology of the Azerbaijan Medical University in 2019, where 2% of patients diagnosed with PD, who were registered in the dispensary, respectively in 2010-2019 (a total of 125 patients), were hospitalized by random selection...

<AbstractText>Recently, an important role in the development of Parkinson's disease (PD) is assigned to the gastrointestinal tract and the enteral nervous system. In particular, the pathological process of PD begins in the gastrointestinal tract decades before progressing to the central nervous system. The microbiota-gut-brain axis is a two-way connecting system between the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract. The pathogenesis of PD can be caused or aggravated by changes in the gastrointestinal microbiota composition...

For a long time it was believed that respiratory disorders (RD) in Parkinson's disease (PD) are rare. However, the situation has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. Thus, special studies have revealed RD in almost half of patients with PD. The paper presents: a literature review, classification of RD in PD, various mechanisms of their development and general approaches to their treatment. Classification of RD in PD is presented.

The results of individual observations and several studies confirm the frequent complaints of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) about difficulty or inability to swim. Difficulties moving the limbs, coordination and maintaining the horizontal position during swimming appear to be the main problems that prevent normal swimming. Further studies are needed to assess the frequency of swimming disorders in PD and the mechanisms of their development. Patients with PD must be educated about the potential risk of drowning and the need to evaluate and carefully monitor their swimming skills before going into deep water...

Thermoregulatory dysfunction is considered to be the least investigated among all the autonomic disorders in Parkinson disease. Pathophysiological mechanisms of this phenomena involve as central, as peripheric parts of nervous system. Dopamine deficiency in combination with peripheric autonomic dysfunction leads to temperature balance disturbance, which may be expressed by various clinical symptoms. Dopaminergic innervation of preoptic-anterior hypothalamus area plays a crucial role in thermoregulation function of central nervous system...

OBJECTIVE: To study clinical features of vestibular disorders in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and to develop methods of their treatment. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study included 90 patients with PD who were divided into two groups: the main group (60 patients with PD and vestibular symptoms (VS)) and the control group (30 patients with PD without VS). All patients underwent clinical neurological examination, assessment of cognitive functions, affective and autonomic disorders as well as neurovestibular examination...

Parkinson's disease is characterized by a variety of motor and non-motor symptoms. More than two hundred years have passed since its description, but we still discover its new manifestations. Abnormal behaviors include impulse control disorders, dopamine dysregulation syndrome, psychotic disorders and others. However, two new phenomena have been recently described in patients with PD. It can manifest in the form of doing inappropriate actions which patient doesn't recognize, or pronouncing/writing unsuitable words and phrases...

BACKGROUND: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is known to be an effective and safe neurosurgical procedure for Parkinson's disease (PD). Traditionally, awake implantation of stimulation system is carried out using microelectrode registration and intraoperative stimulation. Development of neuroimaging technologies enables direct STN imaging. Therefore, asleep surgery without additional intraoperative verification is possible. This approach reduces surgery time and can potentially decrease the incidence of hemorrhagic and infectious complications...

The article provides an overview of the data on the impact of Parkinson's disease on the risk of infection and the course of COVID-19, and also assesses the possible pathogenetic relationship between the SARS-CoV-2 virus, COVID-19 and PD. By penetrating the central nervous system, SARS-CoV-2 can cause not only neurological symptoms, but also exacerbate the course of an existing neurological disease. The impact of Parkinson's disease on the risk of infection and the course of COVID-19 is controversial. However, a number of authors support the opinion that PD is an anti-risk factor for the development of COVID-19, which is associated both with the pathogenesis of the disease and with the used antiparkinsonian drugs, in particular amantadines...

OBJECTIVE: To assess the dynamics of cognitive impairments (CI) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) during L-dopa therapy. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The randomized clinical study included 41 patients with a refined diagnosis of PD 2.5-3.5 stages by Hoehn-Yahr scale, mainly with akinetic-rigid and mixed forms, and with CI associated with PD. All patients were on levodopa therapy. The average duration of the disease was 5 years. The study participants were randomized into two groups according to the design...

Comorbidities of extrapyramidal disorders and multiple sclerosis (MS) are rare. The chance of a combination of MS and Parkinson's disease (PD) is less than 1 in 12.5 million. In total, 42 cases of joint development of these disorders are described in the literature. All described patients had no initial changes in the basal ganglia on MRI, and the development of MS was diagnosed after 1-8 years. Possible common links in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disease and MS, as well as the cumulative effect of the two diseases on the severity of axonal degeneration and neuronal loss are discussed...

Visual hallucinations have a negative effect on the course of Parkinson's disease (PD), being a source of stress for the patients themselves and caregivers. The article discusses the basic theories and pathogenetic mechanisms of the development of visual hallucinations in PD consisting of the following components: impairment of the visual information received from the retina with subsequent disruption of its processing in the central parts of the visual system; lack of suppression of internally generated images through the ponto-geniculo-occipital system; the invasion of REM sleep patterns in wakefulness; decreased ability of the brain stem structures to implement appropriate information filtering as well as excessive drug-induced activation of the mesolimbic system...

Accumulation of genetic data in the field of Parkinson's disease research culminated in identifying risk factors and confident prediction of the disease occurrence. To find new gene-targets for diagnostics and therapy we have to reconstruct gene network of the disease, to cluster genes in the network, to reveal key (hub) genes with largest number of interactions in the network. Using the on-line bioinformatics tools OMIM, PANTHER, g:Profiler, GeneMANIA, and STRING-DB, we have analyzed the current array of data related to Parkinson's disease, calculated the categories of gene ontologies for a large list of genes, visualized them, and built gene networks containing the identified key objects and their relationships...

The article presents data from recent studies on the mechanisms of action and clinical efficacy of amantadines, and also describes a possible protective effect against COVID-19.

OBJECTIVE: To develop and implement the tactics of the differentiated complex (medication in combination with surgery) treatment of the form of Parkinson's disease (PD) associated with dyskinesias, according to the severity of atrophic changes in the brain. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study included 40 patients with PD associated with dyskinesias and motor fluctuations. Patients of the main group received medication and surgical treatment, patients of the comparison group received only medication...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relationships between blood pressure (BP), duration of the high BP, reaction of the cardiovascular system on the physical load with the duration of Parkinson's disease (PD) and motor disorders in PD patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Fifty-six women with PD and high BP in the anamnesis and 91 women with arterial hypertension, stage 1 were included in the study. The groups of the patients did not differ by age (67.14±7.75 vs. 67.24±5.70 years; p >0...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate an influence of 8-week course of winter nordic walking as the multitask on the spatial-temporal characteristics of walking and motor disturbances in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). MATERIAL AND METHODS: Eleven patients (3 men and 8 women, mean age 66.82±3.97 years) with Hoehn and Yahr stage 1 to 2 PD were included in the study. Preliminary medical examination, including the anthropometric profile with the calculation of the body mass index (BMI), the grip strength on the right and left sides, spirometry, functional tests with the physical load (orthostatic test with the determination of systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DPB) and type of reaction (normal, hypertonic, hypotonic), the 6 Minute Walk Test, timed Up and Go test), was performed to evaluate the physical state...

The paper summarizes the literature and author's data on the development of early (preclinical) diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD). Implementation of this diagnosis will promote the use of preventive therapy and change investments in diagnosis and treatment of patients. The paper declares that at present the only approach to early diagnosis of PD is positron-emission tomography of the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system, but it cannot be used for preventive examination due to its high cost. The authors consider that a less specific, but more promising approach to the development of early diagnosis of PD is the search for markers in body fluids, mainly in the blood, in patients at the prodromal stage of PD...