St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ) announced Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approval of its Libra® and LibraXP™ deep brain stimulation (DBS) systems for treating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, a neurological disorder that progressively diminishes a person's control over his or her movements.
Similar to a heart pacemaker, the Libra DBS systems function by delivering mild electrical pulses from an implanted device via thin wires with multiple independent electrodes. The stimulation is targeted to one of three regions in the brain which are involved in muscle control for the symptomatic treatment of Parkinson's disease.
"This approval is an important step forward in bringing our deep brain stimulation systems to a broader market," said Chris Chavez, president of the St. Jude Medical Neuromodulation Division. "We are excited to be able to provide physicians in Australia with these best-in-class deep brain stimulation systems, allowing them to have more capability and control in treating their patients."
The Libra and LibraXP neurostimulators are constant current devices that feature the largest battery capacity of any DBS device in their class, which may maximize the time between device replacement procedures. This therapy can be externally programmed by a clinician to meet individual patient needs.
An estimated 6.3 million people worldwide live with Parkinson's disease, according to the European Parkinson's Disease Association. The disease usually develops in people between the ages of 40 and 70, with an average age of onset of 60 years. Parkinson's disease affects both men and women in almost equal numbers, although research suggests that men are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with the disease than women.
Parkinson's Disease Symptoms
Parkinson's disease patients may experience stiffness or rigidity of the arms and legs, slowness or lack of movement, and walking difficulties, in addition to tremor of the hands, arms, legs, jaw or face. These symptoms can make simple, everyday tasks like getting dressed, shaving, eating with utensils and drinking from a glass difficult. Faced with these challenges, Parkinson's disease patients often have a significant decline in their quality of life.
In addition to the TGA approval, the Libra and LibraXP DBS systems have also received the CE Mark approval in Europe. In the U.S., the systems are currently being evaluated in clinical studies for depression, Parkinson's disease and essential tremor.
For more information and resources about Parkinson's disease you can check out www.parkinsonresearchfoundation.org It's one of the most comprehensive websites on the internet for Parkinson's disease information.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Metabolic profiling of Parkinson's disease: evidence of biomarker from gene expression analysis and rapid neural network detection
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder. The diagnosis of Parkinsonism is challenging because currently none of the clinical tests have been proven to help in diagnosis.
PD may produce characteristic perturbations in the metabolome and such variations can be used as the marker for detection of disease. To test this hypothesis, we used proton NMR and multivariate analysis followed by neural network pattern detection.Methods &Results1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy analysis was carried out on plasma samples of 37 healthy controls and 43 drug-naive patients with PD.
Focus on 22 targeted metabolites, 17 were decreased and 5 were elevated in PD patients (p<0.05). Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) showed that pyruvate is the key metabolite, which contributes to the separation of PD from control samples.
Furthermore, gene expression analysis shows significant (p<0.05) change in expression of PDHB and NPFF genes leading to increased pyruvate concentration in blood plasma. Moreover, the implementation of 1H- NMR spectral pattern in neural network algorithm shows 97.14% accuracy in the detection of disease progression.
Conclusions: The results increase the prospect of a robust molecular definition in detection of PD through the early symptomatic phase of the disease.
This is an ultimate opening for therapeutic intervention. If validated in a genuinely prospective fashion in larger samples, the biomarker trajectories described here will go a long way to facilitate the development of useful therapies.
Moreover, implementation of neural network will be a breakthrough in clinical screening and rapid detection of PD.
PD may produce characteristic perturbations in the metabolome and such variations can be used as the marker for detection of disease. To test this hypothesis, we used proton NMR and multivariate analysis followed by neural network pattern detection.Methods &Results1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy analysis was carried out on plasma samples of 37 healthy controls and 43 drug-naive patients with PD.
Focus on 22 targeted metabolites, 17 were decreased and 5 were elevated in PD patients (p<0.05). Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) showed that pyruvate is the key metabolite, which contributes to the separation of PD from control samples.
Furthermore, gene expression analysis shows significant (p<0.05) change in expression of PDHB and NPFF genes leading to increased pyruvate concentration in blood plasma. Moreover, the implementation of 1H- NMR spectral pattern in neural network algorithm shows 97.14% accuracy in the detection of disease progression.
Conclusions: The results increase the prospect of a robust molecular definition in detection of PD through the early symptomatic phase of the disease.
This is an ultimate opening for therapeutic intervention. If validated in a genuinely prospective fashion in larger samples, the biomarker trajectories described here will go a long way to facilitate the development of useful therapies.
Moreover, implementation of neural network will be a breakthrough in clinical screening and rapid detection of PD.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
