A new pocket-sized portable device helps Parkinson’s patients improve their balance, a new study finds.
People with Parkinson’s disease suffer from symptoms that include loss of motor control, tremors, and stiffness. Patients take medications, primarily dopamine, to help with some of these, but the drug unfortunately has little effect on balance.
Swedish researchers have discovered that a portable stimulating device changes brain activity and enables patients to better maintain balance and avoid falls.
The patients were studied in both medicated and unmedicated states.The device worked particularly well on the unmedicated patients, the research team said.
They now plan to test a smaller stimulator that is about the size of a wallet. It was developed with the help of NASA.
“If the long-term treatment improves the patients’ walking, balance, and symptom variations, we could in the next five years develop the noise stimulation technique and introduce it as a new treatment,” says Filip Bergquist, associate professor at the Sahlgrenska Academy, who led the study.
The research was reported in the journal Brain Stimulation.
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