Basal Ganglia Dysfunction and Pain in PD
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Basal ganglia dysfunction and pain in Parkinson’s disease
IRAS ID
302309
Contact name
Oliver Bandmann
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Pain is a very common and troublesome, but poorly understood symptom in Parkinson’s disease. Despite much research, the exact cause of the pain is unclear. Our study aims to identify which particular structures in the brain may be involved in faulty pain processing in the brain of people with Parkinson’s Disease.
Our proposed study focuses on a novel pain network which is closely linked to the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia are the area of the brain which is most severely affected by Parkinson’s Disease. We want to test whether abnormal pain in Parkinson’s Disease is due to underactivity of a particular structure within the brain stem called parabrachial nucleus . The parabrachial nucleus is very important for pain signalling from the spinal cord to the brain. We think that the parabrachial nucleus is underactive because two other small areas of the brain called subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra pars reticulata block its activity. There is already strong evidence for overactivity of the subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra pars reticulata in Parkinson’s Disease, but nobody has investigated the parabrachial nucleus and its possible role in Parkinson’s Disease pain yet. Functional Magnetic Resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain will be carried out on both patients with PD and healthy controls, looking specifically for activity changes within the parabrachial nucleus, subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra reticulata in Parkinson’s Disease compared to healthy volunteers. As part of this study, the brain’s response to heat/pain stimulation to the top of the feet will be recorded. The same approach has been extensively used by colleagues who have studied pain in Diabetes and Peripheral Neuropathy1, the heat/pain stimulus was well tolerated by the trial participants. Better understanding of the faulty pain networks in the brain of Parkinson’s Disease patients will help us to develop new therapies and to test these new therapies more efficiently in future clinical trials.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
23/NS/0004
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jan 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion