April is Parkinson’s Awareness
Month
April 1, 2016
We often view our grandparents as
some of our biggest role models and seemingly invincible superheroes.
My grandmother Rosemary, a sassy,
active and independent woman was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease shortly
before I began college. At that point, I knew I wanted to get involved “behind
the scenes” and help science and medicine to improve (existing) and develop new
treatments for patients with Parkinson’s. I began my Ph.D. in neuroscience in
2013, with a focus on understanding the role of neuroinflammation in
Parkinson’s disease and developing new therapeutic strategies — and she
couldn’t have been more proud of me.
My grandmother passed away the
following year, five years after her diagnosis. However, others typically live
longer. A problem that plagues the research and medical community is that
Parkinson’s affects everyone differently. Some patients experience
predominantly motor symptoms, others are more disabled by nonmotor symptoms
such as constipation, depression, anxiety and cognitive decline. While the gold
standard treatment provides symptomatic relief of tremor, no therapy exists to
slow or halt disease progression. So how do we get there?
The combined direct and indirect
costs of Parkinson’s disease are estimated to be in excess of $25 billion a
year in the United States alone. Yet, the National Institutes of Health budget
for Parkinson’s research in 2015 was only $146 million (less than 1 percent of
PD costs). Approximately 1 million Americans are currently suffering from
Parkinson’s disease and with the increasing proportion of the aged population,
the prevalence of PD is expected to double by 2050.
Without increased public awareness
and increases in federal and nonprofit funding, progress toward finding
effective treatments is stalled. Patients, their caregivers and researchers
need your support.
How can you help?
This Parkinson’s Awareness Month,
I urge you to get involved — whether it’s making a donation to any number of
foundations to support research and patient programs, registering as a patient
or healthy control for clinical studies, volunteering at nursing home
facilities, fundraising during an event, writing to legislation to increase
funding for PD research, or simply spreading awareness via social media.
Every dollar donated,
participation in a clinical trial, every minute of volunteering with patients
to aid in understanding the disease and improving their quality of life helps
us climb one rung higher on the ladder to finding a cure for Parkinson’s
disease.
Megan Duffy is a 2009 graduate of
Lake Central High School, alumni of Indiana University and is currently a Ph.D.
candidate at Michigan State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She can be
reached at duffyme5@msu.edu.
http://www.nwitimes.com/climbing-toward-a-cure-for-parkinson-s-disease/article_b77884c7-bc56-5b27-853b-fcdd0d214b72.html
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