Early diagnosis and research

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

James Parkinson described a condition known as the “shaking palsy” over 200 years ago. Today there are many things that scientists still don’t understand explaining why diagnosis, halting the progression or finding a cure for Parkinson’s can seem elusive. But how close are researchers to developing better treatments? Better understanding seems to suggest that Parkinson’s is not one condition but several, with different causes and symptoms in different people. Many researchers think that early diagnosis and greater recognition of the non motor symptoms such as loss of smell, sleep disorders and depression is to be encouraged, while others say without effective treatments then there are ethical issues to consider. Jane visits a brain bank and sees the changes in a Parkinson’s brain that causes many of the symptoms and she takes a test which examines the sense of smell. Could this be a new tool to identify early stages of the condition? Plus repurposing of existing drugs, i.e. drugs that have been developed for one condition but being tested in another are having promising results in Parkinson’s and genetic studies are leading to a greater understanding of the mechanisms involved in PD which in turn is leading to new therapies. (Photo: Man smelling hops in his hands. Credit: Ales-A/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is the truth about Parkinson's on the BBC World Service.
0:07.0	I'm Jane Hill and in a research laboratory in London I'm about to have a remarkable experience.
0:15.0	Of course, I have absolutely no sense of what this is going to feel like to the touch,
0:19.0	so... I've never touched a human brain, as an awful lot of us lay people have not so
0:25.9	It's quite heavy. It's through my plastic gloves. It feels slimy. That's the best sense I can get with the gloves on.
0:34.0	You feel slightly emotional actually holding a brain and I didn't know how I was going to react
0:39.0	and it felt like an enormous privilege to hold one, but it also, it made me feel slightly sad if I'm honest.
0:47.0	And I, should I be sad? This may have been someone who had a wonderful, wonderful, very long, healthy, happy life.
0:54.4	There's nothing to suggest that this is sad, but I, I, it was unexpectedly emotional.
1:01.6	And having done this for 30 years, I don't think I'm any less emotional than you are.
1:06.0	These are all individuals.
1:08.0	They've all made that request.
1:09.0	Yeah, you treat them with the same respect you would,
1:11.0	as a patient when they were alive.
1:14.0	Professor Steve Gentlemen is Scientific Director of the Parkinson's UK Brain Bank at Imperial College
1:20.2	London. The unit takes donated brains from people with Parkinson's and
1:25.1	those without to be used in trials all over the world. I want to find out what
1:30.2	research is underway to help the more than 6 million people globally who have the
1:34.9	condition because my dad live with it for more than 10 years and his brother for more than 20.
1:42.4	And there's still so much we don't know. I ask Steve about the
1:46.1	scale of the task facing scientists more than 200 years after Dr James Parkinson
1:52.1	first described the condition.
	...

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