Parkinson's Disease Prevented and Treated with Chinese Medicine
会议名称：《全国中青年中西医结合学术（英语）交流会议》
会议日期：2002年
学科分类：1006[医学-中西医结合] 100602[医学-中西医结合临床] 10[医学]
关 键 词：Parkinson’s disease traditional Chinese medicine mechanism systemic review
摘 要：Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder in the elderly. PD’s cardinal clinical manifestations include resting tremor, slowness of movement, stiffness, and poor balance, which is due to the marked reduction of dopamine content in the corpus striatum resulted from the selective loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. Currently, there is no drug could stop the progression of the disease, levodopa and dopamine agonists are the commonly used drugs and can improve PD symptoms. But, along with the disease progression, long-term use of levodopa can accompany many complications such as reduced efficacy, including wearing-off and on-off, and dyskinesia or involuntary movements. These complications could be harmful and significantly impact the use of anti-parkinsonian drugs and the quality of PD patients. More importantly, it is now still controversial whether or not dopamine itself has neurotoxic effects on dopamine neurons. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been applied to treat PD for many decades and some encouraging results have been obtained. It becomes a pressing task to search for an effective and safer Chinese medicine and TCM therapeutic method to treat and prevent the disease, to diminish the side-effect caused by levodopa, and to prolong the effective duration of levodopa. Authors have made a systemic review on PD treated with TCM for 20 years in China and some mechanism has been mentioned in this article.