TORONTO, Jun 08 (Reuters) -- A nicotine patch may improve symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease, a preliminary study suggests. While it is too early to tell patients to wear such a patch, nine people with early to moderate Parkinson's disease showed improvement in both motor function and cognition -- a catchall term that includes learning and memory -- after being given nicotine by intravenous injection and then wearing a nicotine patch for 2 weeks.
"These improvements appeared to be sustained for up to 1 month after the drug had been discontinued," reported Dr. Paul Newhouse of the University of Vermont last week at the 151st annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.
Parkinson's disease is characterized by progressive degeneration of the dopamine producing-cells in the brain, resulting in tremor, difficulty walking, and eventually paralysis.
"Preliminary analysis shows improvements after acute nicotine administration in several areas of cognitive performance," Newhouse noted. These included improvement in reaction time and central processing speed. After chronic use of nicotine, the researchers also saw improvements in tests of motor function -- the ability to move.
Some studies have shown that smokers are significantly less likely to develop Parkinson's disease than nonsmokers. It's also been shown that cells in laboratory culture dishes release dopamine in the presence of that nicotine, Newhouse said.
"Whether nicotine can do this on a chronic basis is questionable," he said, "but these results are intriguing and we think that nicotinic stimulation may hold promise for improving both cognitive and motor aspects of Parkinson's disease."
