Treating Disorders Besides Parkinson’s
The deep brain stimulation technique used effectively to treat Parkinson’s disease is being investigated as a therapy for other conditions.
- Obsessive Compulsive Disease
- Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health as having persistent, unwelcome thoughts or images and the urgent need to perform certain rituals.
- Epilepsy
- A chronic medical condition produced by temporary changes in the electrical function of the brain, causing seizures which affect awareness, movement, or sensation. (seizure disorder)
- Dystonia
- Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions, which force certain parts of the body into abnormal, sometimes painful, movements or postures. Dystonia can affect any part of the body including the arms and legs, trunk, neck, eyelids, face, or vocal cords. Read an interview from ABC News on this subject.
- Multiple Sclerosis
- A chronic progressive nervous disorder involving loss of myelin sheath around certain nerve fibers. When it affects the cerebellum or the cerebellumÕs connections to other parts of the brain, severe tremor can result.
- Depression
- A psychoneurotic or psychotic disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal tendencies.
- Essential Tremor
- Tremor of unknown cause (usually of the hands and head) that develops in older people; often mistaken for Parkinsonism but is not life-threatening and can usually be kept under control.
Refining the Technique
Dr. Greensburg is a professor at Brown who works with DBS and OCD. During a short interview, Dr. Greensburg mentioned what needs to be done with DBS and some possible mechanisms.
- Efficacy, safety studies on OCD and other disorders.
- Imaging studies of functional effects of DBS in humans.
- Translational studies of DBS mechanisms.
Dr. Greensburg emphasized that the use of deep brain stimulation is still in its experimental stage. DBS is still developing as a therapy and there are many trials to go through. Each lead in the brain can be controlled with different frequency, intensity, and pulse width which leads to many possible combinations and this is not including the area of stimulation.
It also takes time to study the effects of stimulation on the biological circuits. For a patient to show improvement it usually takes 6–12 months.
Dr. Greenburg’s colleagues are also cautious with DBS. In Brown’s Alumni Magazine Dr. Gerhard Friehs states: “We are far from having a cure or a treatment for OCD. We do not want people to get overly excited.” Dr. Steven Rasmuseen says that only one or two of every ten OCD sufferers in the United States seek treatment. He believes that of those who don’t respond to behavioral therapy or drugs, only around 10,000 have symptoms severe enough to meet the standards for the operations.
Thank you to Dr. Greenburg for granting this interview.