Parkinson's treatment 'harms patients'
A treatment hailed as a possible cure for Parkinson's
and other progressive neurological diseases has been shown to be at best
ineffective and at worst actually harmful, according to the results of the first
full clinical trials.
The treatment, an implant of foetal cells into the brain, was found to bring
no improvement in patients older than 60 – the majority of people with
Parkinson's disease – and in 15 per cent of cases resulted in symptoms that
were worse than the disease, and irreversible.
The findings, published in the latest issue of the New England Journal of
Medicine, appear to end one avenue of research in pursuit of a cure not just
for Parkinson's disease, but for Alzheimer's and other neurological ailments.
The results are particularly dispiriting for Parkinson's researchers because
early results of foetal cell implants had been hailed as near-miraculous,
restoring many functions and removing the tremors characteristic of the disease.
According to the Journal, some patients developed exaggerated symptoms
of the disease, including writhing and jerking movements – similar to the
symptoms they would develop if they were taking too high a dose of the
conventional drugs used to treat Parkinson's but more exaggerated and
irreversible. The researchers concluded the implanted cells had
"taken" successfully in the patient's brain – but too successfully,
producing a surfeit of the chemical – dopamine – missing in Parkinson's
sufferers.
Dr Paul Greene, a neurologist at Columbia University College of Physicians
and Surgeons and one of the researchers in the study, which has now been halted,
said the uncontrollable movements in some patients were "absolutely
devastating". He said: "They chew constantly, their fingers go up and
down, their wrists flex and distend.... It's tragic, catastrophic, a real
nightmare. And we can't turn it off."
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