Medical Congress Reports

Exercise may be especially beneficial for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). - Prof Bas Bloem

Exercise may be especially beneficial for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this podcast episode, Professor Bas Bloem, a movement disorders neurologist at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, discusses the value of exercise and some of the barriers that people with Parkinson’s face in getting enough exercise. Besides helping with the motor symptoms of PD, exercise can have a positive effect on non-motor symptoms and may even slow down the progression of the disease. We spoke with him at the World Parkinson Congress.

 

Gene-based therapies for Parkinson’s disease, while still in the developmental stage, are under active investigation. - Prof Roger Barker

For this potential therapy, genes are engineered in a laboratory and then injected into specific parts of the brain. The genes may function either to induce cells in the brain to produce dopamine or to code for the production of enzymes that then lead to the production of dopamine.

 

This episode is the second part of our conversation with Prof. Roger Barker, MBBS, MRCP, PhD, Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In our previous podcast with him, he discussed cell therapy for Parkinson’s. Here, he explains what gene-based therapy is, plans for the application of the treatments, what symptoms they are aimed at, where the field currently stands, and how it compares to developments in cell-based therapies. As the field is still in the experimental stages, he again offers advice to people with Parkinson’s who are considering entering a clinical trial of gene-based or cell-based therapy and what they may expect in terms of symptom management and disease progression.

Carbidopa-levodopa is considered the “gold standard treatment” for Parkinson’s disease. - Emily Peron, PharmD and Dr. Leslie Cloud

Levodopa works to replace levels of dopamine in the brain, thereby alleviating  PD symptoms, while carbidopa works to reduce adverse effects of levodopa in the rest of the body. Although years have passed since the creation of this treatment, it is still commonly known to be an effective drug for reducing PD symptoms in a majority of people living with Parkinson’s. In this episode, Emily Peron, PharmD and Leslie Cloud, MD from Virginia Commonwealth University discuss how and why carbidopa-levodopa continues to be a standard treatment for PD, long-term use considerations, its different forms, and when to recognize the need for potential medication adjustments.

 

Alpha-synuclein is a protein in the human brain that is linked with the development of Parkinson’s disease - Dr. David K.Simon

 An important scientific paper was published in the journal Science by Mittal et al describing how some common drugs, already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for other purposes, may lower the production of alpha-synuclein and potentially protect against Parkinson’s. David K. Simon, MD, PhD, Director of the Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, describes what the researchers did and what they found.

 

Composite Endpoints in Multiple Sclerosis Progression and Disability - Dr. Jerry Wolinsky

For years, multiple sclerosis researchers have been looking for a measure of MS progression and disability that would be meaningful to clinicians, clinical researchers, patients, and the regulatory agencies that approve new drugs, such as the European Medicines Agency and in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration. To this end, people have looked to composite endpoints that are sensitive to small changes in patient condition and are comparable across studies. At the ECTRIMS congress Barcelona, I met with Dr. Jerry Wolinsky, Professor of Neurology and Director of the MS Research Group at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, who leads us along the path to develop a useful measure incorporating composite endpoints.

Observational Data to Inform Multiple Sclerosis Therapies - Dr Ilya Kister

People with multiple sclerosis take disease modifying therapies, or DMTs, for years. But is it possible to stop the drugs at some point or at least take a drug holiday? I met at the ECTRIMS meeting with Dr. Ilya Kister, an assistant professor in the MS Care Center at the New York University School of Medicine. He has looked at various studies and registries that shed light on the question, and he discusses the utility and limitations of using observational data from big data sets.

Lowering the Risk of Multiple Sclerosis Relapses in Pregnancy and After - Dr. Annette Langer-Gould

Pregnancy and the post-partum period present special concerns to women with multiple sclerosis. Dr. Annette Langer-Gould, a neurologist and epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles, investigates ways to lessen the risk of relapses in these women. We discussed the effects of breastfeeding, among other topics, when we met at the ECTRIMS meeting in Barcelona.

Designing Better Clinical Trials in Neuromyelitis Optica - Dr. Brian Weinshenker

In today's podcast, we talk with Dr. Brian Weinshenker of the Mayo Clinic  about innovative ways to do clinical trials involving neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, or NMOSD. We spoke with him at the ECTRIMS congress.

More than a dozen years ago, NMOSD was redefined as a separate disease from multiple sclerosis, thanks to the discovery of the first biomarker for it, an antibody against aquaporin-4, leading to consensus diagnostic criteria for NMOSD. With these criteria in mind, Dr. Weinshenker discusses strategies for better clinical trials in NMOSD.