Use of complementary and alternative therapies in outpatients with Parkinson's disease in Argentina

Abstract

We interviewed 300 patients (54.7% male; mean age was 65.8 ± 9.5) attending the Movement Disorders Clinic at the Buenos Aires University Hospital to determine the prevalence of CATs use and their association with demographic, social, or disease-specific characteristics among patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We found that 25.7% of the PD patients interviewed (77/300) stated they had used CATs to improve their PD symptoms whereas 38.0% (114/300) had used some CATs without any relation to PD, at least once in life. At the moment of the interview, CATs prevalence use was 50.6% in the former group and 25.0% in the latter. The use of CATs was much more frequent among women and more common in the 50- to 69-year age group. Friends and neighbors of the patients had most frequently recommended these therapies. No major association was observed between CATs use and the duration of the disease, side of initial involvement, PD phenotype, or the Hoehn and Yahr staging. Acupuncture, homeopathy, yoga, and therapeutic massage were the most widely used therapies. After the initiation of conventional treatment the use of massage, yoga, and acupuncture in patients using CATs to improve PD significantly increased. Neurologists should be aware and inquire about the use of CATs to rule out potentially harmful effects.

GDNF and PD: Less Common Points of View

“…PD patients commonly use complementary and alternative therapies, including altered diet, dietary supplements, herbal supplements, caffeine, nicotine, exercise, physical and massage therapy, melatonin, bright-light therapy and acupuncture (Lokk & Nilsson, 2010;Pecci et al, 2010;Zesiewicz & Evatt, 2009). What is the impact of these complementary and alternative therapies on GDNF levels?…”

“…Acupuncture is among the complementary and/or alternative therapies most widely used by PD patients (Lokk & Nilsson, 2010;Pecci et al, 2010). Interestingly, increasing evidence supports a beneficial effect of acupuncture on MPTP (Y.G.…”

A Case Report of Drug-Induced Parkinsonism Treated with Jodeung-san and Electro-acupuncture at GB34

“…Acupuncture is an important modality of complementary medicine [1,2] and numerous researchers have studied its effects [3][4][5][6]. In acupuncture studies, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is the most commonly applied method of functional neuroimaging, because it can indirectly measure brain activity and functional changes of the brain without harmful radiation and invasive procedures [5,[7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…Complementary and alternative therapy is being used more often as a complementary treatment to Western medicine for patients with PD [24][25][26][27]. As many as 40% of patients with PD use some form of complementary medicine during the course of their illness [28], and among these, acupuncture is popular [1]. Acupuncture has been reported to have a neuroprotective effect in PD animal models [4,[29][30][31][32].…”

“…Acupuncture has been reported to have a neuroprotective effect in PD animal models [4,[29][30][31][32]. In particular, the acupoint GB 34 was reported to lead to significant improvements in patients with PD [1,33,34] and significant neuroprotective effects in PD animal models [6,35,36].…”