Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, February 1, 2016
Modeling and Imaging Cardiac Neurodegeneration in Parkinson's Disease
Marina E. Emborg, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Dept of Medical Physics, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI - USA
Fatigue is a common complaint of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, but until recently few physicians would identify it as a nonmotor symptom of PD. A similar situation occurs with orthostatic hypotension, which is known to increase falls and related injuries in PD. Both are manifestations of cardiac dysautonomia, do not respond to anti-PD treatments and severely affect patients’ quality of life. Loss of cardiac postganglionic sympathetic innervation is a key component of cardiac dysautonomia in PD; today there are no treatments to prevent it. In this presentation we will discuss how progress in the understanding of PD is contributing to the creation of novel animal models and imaging tools to be used to identify and test therapeutic targets of cardiac neurodegeneration.