The exciting research that may cure Parkinson’s
Parkinson’s disease is on the rise. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the prevalence of the neurodegenerative disease has doubled worldwide since the turn of the century. This has been linked to a constellation of factors, though the most prominent risks are age and genetics. As the world population grows older, we’re likely to see Parkinson’s cases, and deaths, grow in tandem.
Parkinson’s disease caused 329,000 deaths in 2019, according to the WHO, a 100% increase since 2000. Each data point represents the heartbreaking struggles of people and families living with the diseases. And those realities can be devastating.
Mart Saarma, a neurobiologist and professor at the University of Helsinki, has witnessed it firsthand. His uncle was stricken with the disease, and Saarma watched as it slowly degraded his uncle’s quality of life and transformed his personality. Once, Saarma went to help his uncle, and his uncle called the police. Unable to recognize his nephew, he feared a stranger had come to rob him.
“People have understood how important it is to fight cancer, and thanks to that, we have started to get the first efficient cancer drugs. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with neurodegenerative diseases,” Saarma says. “The field still suffers from [a lack of] funding, and this is becoming a significant problem in Western societies. We now have about 10-12 million Parkinson’s patients, which will double in 20 years. We need to take this very seriously.”
