Managing Parkinson Disease Despite Motor and Nonmotor Challenges: Stewart Factor, DO

“We have a lot of treatments and there have been a lot of new treatments in the last [few] years, but there are still many challenges [in managing Parkinson disease].”

The management of Parkinson disease has never afforded itself to clinicians as an easy task, and even with a gold standard therapy in levodopa, many physicians have experienced first-hand the difficulties that present in both motor and nonmotor fashion.

As Stewart Factor, DO, professor of neurology, and director, Jean and Paul Amos Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Program, Emory University School of Medicine, explained to NeurologyLive, one of the largest unmet needs for this population is the nonmotor issues. These include cognitive challenges—which he deemed the biggest issue—as well as symptoms of psychosis, hallucinations, and delusions. Similar to the case with the motor symptoms of Parkinson, there are treatments for these nonmotor symptoms, though they are even more limited in number.

In this interview, Factor ran through these obstacles to treatment in detail and took the time to discuss some of the specifics related to the introduction of new medicines and what the pipeline looks like. He noted that in spite of an “explosion” of new therapies in the past few years, many of the individuals with the disease remain struck by uncontrolled issues.