Dr Marios Politis awarded research grant from Parkinson's UK

Dr Marios Politis

Dr Marios Politis has been awarded research grant for an 18 month study into new treatments for dyskinesia.

Dr Marios Politis awarded £200,000 research grant from Parkinson’s UK

Dr Marios Politis has been awarded a £200,000 research grant for an 18 month study into new treatments for dyskinesia.

Levodopa is currently the main drug used to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s. It works well at first but can produce significant side effects. More than 1 in 3 people who take it for more than five years develop dyskinesia – uncontrolled jerky movements that seriously affect quality of life.

The challenge is to understand how and why dyskinesia develops in some people with Parkinson’s and to find new treatments that can prevent or reduce these uncontrolled movements.

This study will be the first to investigate PDE-10, an enzyme which may be a promising new treatment target for dyskinesia. Animal studies suggest that PDE-10A is significantly involved in the development of dyskinesia and that drugs that block PDE-10A activity may be helpful.

The project will use brain scans to study PDE-10A in people with Parkinson’s and will take place at Imanova at Hammersmith Hospital.

Marios’s research team will use brain scans to investigate if the PDE-10A enzyme is overactive in people with Parkinson’s who experience dyskinesia compared to those do not.

If the team find that PDE-10A is overactive in people who experience dyskinesia, they plan to carry out clinical trials to test whether PDE-10A blocking drugs can reduce these side effects. Ultimately this research could lead to the first effective treatment to tackle the distressing uncontrollable movements that affect many people living with Parkinson’s.

Adapted from an article by Claire Bale, Research Communications Manager, London, Parkinson's UK