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New hope to help advanced Parkinson's patients walk, sleep again

People with advanced Parkinson's disease often struggle to walk more than a few steps or sleep through the night, but new research offers hope of relief from these two debilitating symptoms.

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Suffered by millions worldwide, the degenerative disease erodes motor functions and in its later stages often confines patients to a bed or wheelchair.

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This is due to a condition called orthostatic hypotension, which occurs when a person stands up and their blood pressure drops, causing dizziness and even fainting after a couple of steps.

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For Parkinson's sufferers, it happens because a regulator in the brain -- which normally ensures sufficient blood flows to the brain when we stand up -- has been disrupted.

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But new French research published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week found that a spinal cord implant could help advanced Parkinson's patients get back on their feet.

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Earlier this year neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch and Gregoire Courtine revealed that such an implant had enabled three paralysed people to walk again.

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Both were also involved in the latest research, which tested a similar implant on a 48-year-old woman.

While the woman did not have Parkinson's, she had such similar symptoms -- including orthostatic hypotension -- that she was initially diagnosed with the disease.

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For paralysed people, the spinal cord implant mimics how the brain sends electrical pulses to muscles, reconnecting a severed link.

But for orthostatic hypotension, it stimulates the regulator in the brain that senses the need to send more blood when people stand upright.

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Before receiving the implant, the woman would faint after a taking a few of steps.

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Three months after the surgery, she was able to walk more than 250 metres (820 feet) with the help of a walking frame, the study said.

"She is not cured, she would not run a marathon, but this surgery has clearly improved her quality of life," Bloch told AFP.

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