Early subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease reduces long-term medication costs.

INTRODUCTION: Subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) is recognized as a safe and effective treatment in mid- and advanced-staged Parkinson's disease (PD) that decreases the need for PD medications and their associated costs. This study reports medication costs from the only clinical trial to evaluate DBS in patients with early-stage PD and projects costs through advanced-stage disease. METHODS: The DBS in early-stage PD pilot was a prospective, single-blind clinical trial that randomized 30 patients with early-stage PD 1:1 to receive bilateral STN-DBS plus optimal drug therapy (ODT) or ODT alone. Subjects who completed the trial participated in an observational follow-up study and were evaluated annually for five years after randomization. PD medication data collected at each study visit were used to calculate and project medication costs (n = 28). RESULTS: Five-year cumulative medication cost reduction with early DBS+ODT was $28,246. Mean annual medication cost for early DBS+ODT subjects was 2.4 times lower than early ODT subjects (ß = 2.4, 95%CI:1.5-3.7, p = 0.0004). Early DBS+ODT is projected to reduce cumulative medication costs by $104,958 over 15 years of disease duration. CONCLUSION: DBS in early-stage PD may provide long-term medication cost reduction compared to standard care.

Exploring the presence of multiple abnormal non-motor features in patients with cervical dystonia.

This study's aim was to investigate prevalence of four non-motor symptoms in patients with cervical dystonia and healthy controls to explore whether the presence of multiple non-motor features is associated with cervical dystonia diagnosis. Fifteen patients with cervical dystonia and 15 healthy controls underwent non-invasive testing of spatial discrimination threshold, temporal discrimination threshold, vibration-induced illusion of movement, and kinesthesia. All spatial discrimination threshold, temporal discrimination threshold, and vibration-induced illusion of movement measures were converted to standardized Z scores with scores >2.0 considered abnormal. Any incorrect kinesthesia response was considered abnormal. Prevalence of each abnormal non-motor feature was compared between groups using a chi-squared test. A higher proportion of patients with cervical dystonia had abnormal spatial discrimination threshold (p = 0.01) and abnormal kinesthesia (p = 0.03) scores compared to healthy control subjects. There were no significant differences between the proportion of patients with cervical dystonia versus healthy controls for abnormal temporal discrimination threshold (p = 0.07) or abnormal vibration-induced illusion of movement (p = 0.14). Forty-seven percent of patients with cervical dystonia (7/15) demonstrated one abnormal non-motor feature, 20% (3/15) displayed two abnormal features, and 13% (2/15) displayed three abnormal features. Kinesthesia was the only non-motor feature identified as abnormal in the control group (20%, 3/15). All four tests demonstrated high specificity (80-100%) and low-moderate sensitivity (13-60%). These findings suggest that non-motor feature testing, specifically for spatial discrimination threshold and kinesthesia, could be a highly specific diagnostic tool to inform cervical dystonia diagnosis. Further investigation is needed to confirm these findings.