Research
In partnership with our Centers of Excellence network, NPF participates in and supports research to advance treatments for patients with Parkinson’s disease. NPF’s research initiatives fall into two categories:
- Building our understanding of Parkinson’s disease. Through competitive grants and targeted support, NPF has funded research that has yielded quantum leaps in our understanding of the disease. Dr. Richard Smeyne showed experimentally that a pathogen associated with PD could enter the brain via the peripheral nervous system. Professor Anne Graybiel has shown how PD affects learning and how the thought process around habit formation is affected by Parkinson’s disease, and how this is corrected by medication. Dr. Andrew Siderowf found a biomarker for Parkinson’s disease progression using NPF-funded resources.
- Improving care quality for people with Parkinson’s. Whenever people study how well doctors follow guidelines, they typically find that most patients receive around one half of the care they should be. Receiving the right care is very important, as bad care can not only result in deteriorating quality of life for patients but it can also limit our ability to test theories about how to improve care. If patients in a clinical trial get uneven care, how can we know whether their outcomes are a result of the new drug or a consequence of the care they receive. Getting the best care to patients improves lives and helps us understand the new ideas that could revolutionize care.
Below are descriptions of several ways that NPF works to advance the science of Parkinson’s disease.
Quality Improvement Initiative
How do patients know they are getting the most up-to-date care? With a disease as complex as Parkinson’s, where no one “recipe” suits everyone, it’s difficult to tell. For this reason, NPF has launched the Quality Improvement Initiative, (QII), a research project to determine what treatments produce the best outcomes over time in Parkinson’s disease.
In industry, quality improvement projects not only result in better products, they result in better understanding. NPF’s Quality Improvement Initiatives (QII) brings this mindset to Parkinson’s. In partnership with our Centers of Excellence, NPF has launched the first data-driven quality improvement initiative in Parkinson’s disease. This project systematically measures and tracks care over time for thousands of patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The goal is to explore the variation in current clinical practice in order to determine what constitutes exemplary care for patients. Our ultimate aim is to create and share models of excellent care, to fulfill our mission of the best care for every patient, whether they are seen by a specialist at a NPF Center of Excellence, a general neurologist or their primary care physician.
Learn more about NPF's Quality Improvement Initiative.
Clinical Research Fund
The Clinical Research Fund is designed to support cutting-edge clinical studies of new therapeutic options for Parkinson’s patients as well as research comparing the effectiveness of existing treatment options. RFAs are issued as funding becomes available, but no less than once per year. All research is peer-reviewed by NPF’s Clinical and Scientific Advisory Board (CSAB).The singular aim of NPF’s research is to partner with our Centers of Excellence to discover the best treatment and care options for people living with Parkinson’s disease. NPF no longer funds basic laboratory research.
Learn more about NPF's Clinical Research Fund.
Research Highlights
In 2010, NPF funded research achieved several major successes.
NPF-funded work at St. Jude
Children’s Research Hospital studied virulent strains of flu virus that are associated with the development of Parkinsonian symptoms. Richard Smeyne, Ph.D., demonstrated that virus particles could travel into the brain by being transported up the axons of the spinal cord, suggesting an important mechanism for PD progression.
Bastiaan Bloem, M.D., Ph.D., of Nijmegen,
the Netherlands, tested and proved how beneficial the use of specialist physical therapists in the care of Parkinson’s patients, and also created a computer-based referral network. This was the culmination of years of NPF-funded work, and this important work validated NPF’s long-standing push to ensure that allied health professionals be included in PD care and develop specialized protocols for working with people with PD.
Connie Marras, MD, published findings about how genetic Parkinson’s disease differs from non-genetic PD and how they are the same. As new and more sophisticated therapies are tested and released for PD, it will be increasingly important to understand what kind of Parkinsonism a patient has, as studies may assess the impact of a treatment on different types and, eventually, therapies may be different for PD developed in different pathways.
Several initiatives focused on hospitalization: Catherine Price, Ph.D. studied the risks of surgery to patients with Parkinson’s and, in an effort that crossed the entire Center network, the Foundation coordinated an assessment of important issues when people with PD are hospitalized. These efforts have highlighted the importance of ensuring that people with PD be extra careful when hospitalized and alert their neurologist that they are being hospitalized as soon as they can.
New projects in 2010 included advancing the science of neural imaging, work being done by Antonio Strafella, M.D., Ph.D., at the world-leading Toronto Western Hospital Movement Disorders Center, a study evaluating the early impact of Parkinson’s disease on how people think, and a sophisticated look at two leading techniques for delivering physical therapy.
Learn more about NPF's Grant Accomplishments.
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