Objective: To better understand the benefits of DBS in non-motor symptoms.

Background: Parkinson’s disease(PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons, generating motor and non-motor symptoms, and its treatments are eminently symptomatic. The treatments begin with an effective pharmacological approach that evolves negatively with extreme complications. At this stage, the gold standard of treatment is the deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN), however the evidence of improvement of non-motor symptoms such as depression and pain has been conflicting, which corroborates to the wane of quality of life and it is been often neglected.

Methods: Male Wistar rats were submitted to an intrastriatal injection of 12 µg of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) or saline in the left hemisphere. Then, the animals were implanted or not with stainless steel electrodes in the left STN. All animals were submitted to the paw pressure test (hyperalgesia behavior) before and after 7 days of the surgery. In the 8^th day, the animals were divided in four groups: saline or hemiparkinsonian without implant; hemiparkinsonian implanted but not stimulated (control of the implant); and hemiparkinsonian rats implanted and stimulated for 5 days during 2 h (130 Hz, 60µs). After the last stimulation, animals were submitted to the apomorphine-induced rotation test, and in the other day, they were submitted to the paw pressure test, catalepsy test and forced-swimming test (depression-like behavior).

Results:  The model was characterized by the increase in the contralateral rotation in hemiparkinsonian rats without stimulation, and in the immobility of these animals in the catalepsy test. The DBS animals presented less contralateral rotation to the lesion side and catalepsy behavior, showing an improvement of motor deficits. As regards to the non-motor symptoms, our DP model reproduced the finds in humans inducing a decrease in 60% of the nociceptive threshold in both posterior paws and inducing an increase of 45% in immobility in the forced swimming test. However, the DBS was able only to reverse the pain caused by the nigrostriatal lesion, without interfered with the depressive-like behavior.

Conclusions:

Our preliminary results showed that STN-DBS improved the motor and painful behaviors related to PD, but more research is necessary to understand the mechanisms and ameliorate the results of the stimulation.

« Back to 2017 International Congress

MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/riding-the-puzzle-deep-brain-stimulation-and-the-non-motor-symptoms-in-parkinsons-disease/