Beneficial effects of Physiotherapy on function in Parkinson's disease

Although there are many options available to treat PD, there continues to be no cure for this disease. Drugs used to treat PD, halt the symptoms of the disease for a few years, but later can result in serious complications as the disease progresses. Surgery as another option available to treat PD has been shown to carry significant risk factors and treat only certain symptoms of PD. Several studies demonstrated that exercise provides protection against PD and lowers the risk of getting PD, but most of these studies did not examine the physiological mechanisms of how exercise helps patients with PD. In this book, we conducted experiments to begin to narrow down the possible changes occurring with exercise in chronic/progressive animal model of PD that would explain the beneficial outcomes. These mechanisms include the beneficial effect of exercise on Respiratory parameters such as O2 consumption, CO2 production, heat production and citrate synthase activity in cardiac and skeletalmuscles. On neurotrophic factors; GDNF, which are known to be involved in neuronal survival and regeneration and on angiogenesis markers in the striatum of PD.