Topics of special interest in research of Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been recognized as a idiopathic, degenerating disease presenting a mixture of a variety of different grades of rigidity, tremor, and akinesia. Today it is established that the axial pathology of the disease is the nigrostriatal DA deficiency, for which the treatment using levodopa or DA agonists produces markedly favourable results. Due to advances in drug treatment and resulting prolongation of the life span of PD patients, symptoms that had previously been not considered as being of core importance, have slowly become recognized as being important. These symptoms and difficulties in the later stage of the patients under long-term levodopa treatment for more than several years are disturbances of postural control and gait, emotional deterioration, and deterioration of cognitive function.