Psychiatric
symptoms are common in Parkinson’s disease (PD), occur at higher prevalence
than in age-matched controls and have significant impact on quality of life.
However psychiatric symptoms are often underrecognized in clinical practice
because of the lack of spontaneous complaints from patients. Depression is one
of the most common psychiatric symptoms occurring in PD patients. PD patients
with depression feel sad, anxiety, irritable and restless, and may lose
interest in activities once enjoyable etc. The causes of depression in PD
patients are not clear but the decreased levels of serotonergic and
noradrenergic and dopaminergic neurotransmission in brain are implicated as
relevant factors.
In
clinical studies, one of the prominent responses to acupuncture treatment in PD
patients, is the reported effect on depression. Many patients experienced great
improvement in their symptoms and this is reflected on the results of Beck
Depression Inventory, one of the most widely used instruments for measuring
severity of depression, which showed a significant decrease in the scores in
patients with acupuncture therapy compared with control treatment group. It has
been reported that acupuncture stimulation caused activation of serotonergic
neurons in the dorsal raphe neuclei in the midbrain leading to elevated levels
of serotonin which is confirmed by neuroimaging studies.
Reference:
ML
Eng et al., (2006) Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Vol. 12,
395-399. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=eng+ml%2C+acupuncture%2C+parkinson%27s
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