Parkinson’s Disease: Yale’s Comprehensive Treatment Approach

Many people are familiar with dopamine and its associations with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, but they might not realize the role the chemical messenger plays in motor control, balance, and muscle movement.

In fact, low levels of dopamine are associated with Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the death or impairment of dopamine-producing neurons in a part of the brain called the substantia nigra. This leads to a significant reduction in dopamine levels, which causes the motor symptoms associated with the disease, such as tremors, muscle stiffness, gait imbalances, and digestive issues, including constipation.

At the Yale Medicine Movement Disorders Program, a team of specialists, including movement disorder experts and social workers (to address things like mental health or patients’ needs at home), provide individualized care to people with Parkinson’s disease and offer them the latest treatments.

For example, in the past, patients would only be offered surgical treatment when medications failed. But now surgery—in the form of deep brain stimulation—is often offered earlier as it might postpone disease progression, says Zion Zibly, MD, MBA, a Yale Medicine neurosurgeon.

With deep brain stimulation (DBS), two electrodes are implanted in the brain and a battery-powered stimulator is implanted in the upper chest and connected to the electrodes with a wire. The stimulator sends electrical pulses to parts of the brain to block nerve signals that cause Parkinson’s symptoms.

“This simulation inhibits the activity of this specific area in a way that we can almost make the tremors go away, and we can reduce their medication dose, which can avoid medication side effects,” Dr. Zibly says.

Meanwhile, Yale School of Medicine researchers continue to search for a cure for Parkinson’s, as well as ways to slow or stop its progression, including the use of gene therapy.

Yale Medicine experts talk more about Parkinson’s disease in the video above.