Climbing toward a cure for Parkinson’s disease

April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month

April 1, 2016

Megan Duffy Times Correspondent

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.

 “Cures aren’t going to fall from the sky, we have to climb up and get them.” — Michael J. Fox 

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