Early stages of Parkinson’s disease: aspects of the diagnosis and therapy

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by steady progression and results into persistent disability. It has been known that more than 10 years may elapse between the onset of cell death in certain structures of the nervous system and the onset of clinical symptoms of the disease, and most of the dopaminergic neurons are lost during this period. The identification of patients in the period between the expected onset of dopaminergic cell loss and the onset of clinical parkinsonism may be crucial for the development of effective neuroprotective treatment strategies. The scientists around the world are currently paying special attention to the search for reliable clinical, neuroimaging and molecular markers that could help diagnose PD in the early stages, distinguish it from other pathological conditions, track progression, and detect a positive response to therapy. The article provides an overview of the status update on the problem of early diagnosis and search for early clinical signs, preclinical biochemical, genetic and neuroimaging markers of PD, the main modern directions of PD therapy. Symptomatic pharmacotherapy, which compensates for dopaminergic deficiency and is able to alleviate motor and some nonmotor symptoms of parkinsonism, as well as some neuroprotective treatment options, have been analysed. Among other factors, the role of amantidines is described in detail. The foreign and domestic experience of their use as monotherapy and complex treatment of PD is presented. The author provides an analysis of the clinical case of PK-Merz therapy of the initial stage of PD.