The potential neuromodulatory impact of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation on Parkinson's disease progression.

Introduction: STN-DBS has been claimed to change progressionsymptomsin animal models of PD, but information is lacking about the possible neuromodulatory role of STN-DBS in humans. The aim of this prospective controlled study was to evaluate the long-term impact of STN-DBS on motor disabilities and cognitive impairment in PD patients in comparison to Best-Medical-Therapy (BMT) and Long-term-Post-Operative (POP) groups.

Material And Methods: Patients were divided into 3 groups: the BMT-group consisted of 20 patients treated only with pharmacotherapy, the DBS-group consisted of 20 PD patients who underwent bilateral STN-DBS (examined pre- and postoperatively) and the POP-group consisted of 14 long-term postoperative patients in median 30 month-time after DBS.

Verbal fluency in research conducted with PET technique under conditions of extended cognitive activation with the use of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) tracer.

Objectives: Functional neuroimaging of the brain is a widely used method to study cognitive functions. The aim of this study was to compare the activity of the brain during performance of the tasks of phonemic and semantic fluency with the paced-overt technique in terms of prolonged activation of the brain.

Methods: The study included 17 patients aged 20-40 years who were treated in the past for Hodgkin'slymphoma, now in remission.