To relieve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, Jean-Martin Charcot, a famous neurologist in the 19th century developed a “vibration chair” that showed improvements in his patients. However, Charcot died soon afterwards, before being able to conduct a more comprehensive evaluation of his therapy.

A team of neurological researchers from the Rush University Medical Center has replicated Charcot’s work to examine whether his observations were substantiated. Their study, published in the April issue of Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, suggests that even though vibration therapy does significantly improve some symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, the effect was noted in both the treatment group and the control group, which indicates other factors, aside from vibration, played a role.

Lead researcher Christopher G. Goetz, MD, director of the Parkinson’s disease and Movement Disorders Center at Rush, explains:

“We attempted to mimic Charcot’s protocol with modern equipment in order to confirm or refute an historical observation. Both the treated group and the control group improved similarly, suggesting other factors had an effect on Parkinson’s disease motor function.”

Charcot obtained the idea for developing the vibration chair, which copied the continuous jerking of a carriage or train after his patients informed him that their uncomfortable or painful symptoms seemed to disappear during long carriage rides or train journeys, and that the relief lingered for some time until after the journey.

Goetz and his team randomly assigned 23 patients to one month of 30 minute long daily therapy sessions in either a vibrating chair or the same chair without vibration, with both groups listening to a relaxation CD of nature sounds during their session.

The findings revealed that those in the vibration treatment group made a considerable improvement in motor function after one month of daily 30-minute therapy sessions, but that the ‘non-vibration’ group also noted a considerable improvement, although not as high as the other group. In addition, both groups had similar and substantial improvements in terms of anxiety, depression, fatigue and nighttime sleep and reported similar high satisfaction with their therapy sessions.

Goetz explains:

“Our results confirm Charcot’s observation of improvement in Parkinson’s disease symptomology with chronic vibration treatment, but we did not find the effect specific to vibration. Instead, our data suggest that auditory sensory stimulation with relaxation in a lounge chair or simply the participation in a research protocol has equivalent benefit as vibration on motor function. While we can agree that our results may not change scientific thinking on treatment mechanisms, our results will allow clinicians to guide patients to at least one apparatus that is safe and associated with objective changes in parkinsonian impairment scores.”

Goetz concludes:

“Charcot’s advice to colleagues resonates as one places vibration therapy in the context of potential options for patients. ‘It is no small gain to be able to relieve the sufferers of paralysis agitans.'”

Written By Petra Rattue