Jean-Benoit Legault, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — A large international study involving McGill University is looking for participants with or at high risk of suffering from Parkinson’s disease in order to further the early detection and treatment of this neurodegenerative disorder.
The Ottawa Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital are the only other Canadian centers to participate in the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) study, which is funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The researchers wish to recruit some 4,000 subjects worldwide.
The purpose of PPMI is to track changes in patients’ health over time, sometimes starting several years before the first symptoms appear.
This might one day lead to the development of therapies that will slow the progression of the disease, or even prevent it altogether, especially since it now seems possible to establish an early diagnosis of Parkinson’s ten or fifteen years before the first symptoms.
“We have good treatments for Parkinson’s, to help with the symptoms, but the disease still progresses,” said the head of the PPMI project at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (the Neuro), Dr. Ron Postuma.
If the disease took hold ten years ago, before a first meeting with the doctor, ten years were lost during which we might have tried to intervene to slow down its progression, and it is perhaps a little late to get a good improvement, he added.
“But if we can detect patients ten years earlier and give preventive treatments, we may never see Parkinson’s, we may never see dementia, we may never see the other problems of aging said Doctor Postuma.
In addition to participants who have recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, the researchers want to be able to count on subjects who newly present with agitated dreams during which they cry and move, a gradual loss of smell (without COVID or other trauma) or even family history ― three factors that increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.
These potential participants will undergo a medical examination which will determine whether the disease will appear within a few years. If so, they will be invited to participate in the study.
The first step will be to monitor the development of symptoms. But starting next year, Dr. Postuma added, several preventive drugs might be tested.
“It’s very exciting,” he said. It’s not just measuring things. From next year, we start to do something.
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To participate in the study:
