Acupuncture therapy for non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease

Non-motor symptoms (NMS) of Parkinson’s disease (PD) are common but often are not well recognized in clinic practice due to the lack of spontaneous complaints from patients and of effective procedures of identification. NMS occurs throughout the course of the disease. Some of them, such as depression, fatigue and smelling dysfunction, may appear at the earliest stage of the disease in not treated patients. Others appear at the advanced stage of the disease. At the time of diagnosis, the prevalence of NMS among PD patients is 21% (pain, urinary symptoms, depression and anxiety) and goes up to 88% after 7 years disease progression. NMS of PD ranges from autonomic dysfunction, neuropsychiatric disorders, sleep disturbance to gastrointestinal syndromes and many others and are under-treated. Indeed, non-motor aspects of PD have greater influence on quality of life and institutionalization rates, and healthcare cost. In general NMS of PD respond poorly if at all to dopaminergic treatment, indicating the involvement of other neurotransmitters besides the dopamine.

Acupuncture including manual and electroacupuncture is effective in treat both motor symptoms and non-motor symptoms of PD. Studies about the mechanisms of acupuncture reported that acupuncture stimulation modulates the expression of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, glutamate and gammaaminobutyric acid etc in the brain.  Available clinic studies showed that acupuncture therapy significantly improves NMS such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, pain, orthostasis, constipation, fatigue and vomiting, leading to the improvement of quality of life in PD patients.

Reference:

Cristian A et al., Evaluation of acupuncture in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease: a double-blind pilot study. Movement Disorders, 2005, Vol. 20:1185-1188.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=cristian+a%2C+acupuncture