Episode 65: Recognizing Non-motor Symptoms in PD

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is often thought of in terms of its motor symptoms, such as slowness of movement, stiffness, and tremor. While l-dopa and dopaminergic drugs can help alleviate the motor symptoms of PD, patients are often also troubled by common non-motor symptoms such as fatigue, pain, sleep disturbances, constipation, urinary and sexual problems, and disturbed mood or cognition.

The good news is there are ways to address these problems, such as with other medications, visits to PD specialized therapists, exercise, dance, and other movement regimes. An awareness of non-motor symptoms and their connection to PD can help people with Parkinson’s find therapists, activities, and solutions that may alleviate the symptoms. In this podcast, Dr. Daniel Van Wamelen of King’s College in London discusses non-motor symptoms and ways to address them.

Released: October 8, 2019

Daniel van Wamelen received his medical degree from Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 2008. Following this, he obtained his PhD entitled ‘Hypothalamic pathology in Huntington’s Disease’ at the same university with a large part of the work carried out at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam. He trained as a neurologist at the Leiden University Medical Centre where he obtained his degree in 2016. He became interested in movement disorders during this time and later undertook a clinical fellowship with Professor Bas Bloem in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He currently works with Professor Ray Chaudhuri as a postdoctoral clinical research fellow at King’s College London and the Parkinson’s Foundation Centre of Excellence, King’s College Hospital, London.

His research interests are the non-motor aspects of movement disorders, in particular Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease. In his research, the focus has been on understanding the functional anatomy of non-motor symptoms, such as sleep and autonomic dysfunction, in movement disorders using neuropathological methods and clinical (translational) research. The current focus of his research activities is on repurposing existing medication for Parkinson’s disease, such as the potential effect of Apomorphine on cerebral amyloid deposition, and wearable sensors for non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease.