Parkinson's patients respond well to purely placebo treatment arm rigidity reduced

Main Category: Parkinson's Disease
Article Date: 23 May 2004 - 0:00 PDT


According to research carried out by Italian scientists, patients with Parkinson's Disease respond well to purely placebo treatment - or dummy treatment. The scientists say the placebo treatment has a positive effect on the patients' brain.

They found that their placebo therapy made the overactive part of the brain return to normal levels of activity. Patient's symptoms improved as a result.

You can read about this study in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The study was carried out by Professor Fabrizio Benedetti and colleagues at Turin University, Italy.

A placebo effect is a treatment using a fake (sham) drug or treatment which brings about therapeutic benefits because the patient believes it will help him/her.

The eleven patients with Parkinson's disease were given injections of drugs that relieve muscle stiffness and tremors for a short while. Later they gave the patients another injection which consisted of a salt solution - no medication at all. However, the patients did not know they were not receiving a drug this time. Six of the eleven patients experienced a reduction in arm rigidity. They also had significant reductions in nerve cell activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN). This part of the brain controls movement. Parkinson's disease patients have an overactive subthalamic nucleus.

The other five patients who experienced no reduction in arm rigidity had no reduction in STN activity.

In order to make sure that their findings were not influenced by some outside factor (not related to the placebo), the team monitored another twelve patients who did not receive any treatment. They showed no change in their STN activity.

This suggests that the change in the six patients was caused by the placebo treatment.

The scientists are convinced that relief of Parkinson's disease symptoms is associated with a fall in activity in the subthalamic nucleus.

Other studies carried out recently have indicated that there is a placebo effect on dopamine levels - a brain chemical. Patients with Parkinson's disease produce insufficient quantities of dopamine. Low dopamine levels affects coordination.

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