Depression is often neglected in patients with Parkinson's disease despite being a common symptom of the medical condition, a new research shows.
Researchers at the Northwestern Medicine and the National Parkinson's Foundation studied the medical records of at least 7,000 people with Parkinson's disease, a chronic neurodegenerative disorder characteristically associated with movement dysfunction. The data was collected from the patient database of NPS. Their findings showed that just one-third of those suffering high levels of depressive symptoms were prescribed antidepressants prior to the study. Moreover, there were fewer social workers or mental health professionals for counseling these patients.
"We confirmed suspicion that depression is a very common symptom in Parkinson's disease. Nearly a quarter of the people in the study reported symptoms consistent with depression," Danny Bega, MD, '14 GME, instructor in the Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology and first author of the study, said in a press release. "This is important because previous research has determined that depression is a major determinant of overall quality of life."
Bega said that a majority of patients in the study remained untreated. "Still, the physician recognition of depression in this population was actually better than previous reports had suggested."
Depression is a widespread non-motor symptom of Parkinson's. Bega advised that physicians must be extra alert while screening patients for depression as a part of routine assessment of Parkinson's disease. Apart from this, Bega also stressed the need to assess the effectiveness of different treatments for depression.
A recent research by the Emory University School of Medicine researchers found that an experimental anti-inflammatory drug, XPro1595, eases the loss of motor function in Parkinson's disease. The research was conducted on rat models and the findings showed that by reducing dopamine neuron loss with XPro1595, the team was able to lessen motor impairment related to immune cell activation to a great extent.
The findings of the study were published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease.
