The effect of 8 weeks of transcranial pulsed electromagnetic field treatment on hand tremor and coherence between hands in people with Parkinson’s disease.
Potential neuroprotective effects of pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) have been reported in vitro and in rodents, as have PEMF influences on human tremor.
The aim of this investigation was to detect the effect of 8 weeks daily transcranial PEMF (T-PEMF) treatment in people with PD on resting and postural hand tremor characteristics and on coherence between hands.
Introduction
The hand accelerations of 50 PD participants with unilateral or bilateral tremor who participated in a clinical trial were analyzed. A postural tremor and rest task performed during serial subtraction was evaluated before and after 8 weeks of T-PEMF (30 min/day, 50 Hz, ±50 V, 3 ms square pulses) or placebo treatment (stimulation simulated 30 min/day) . ). Forty matched (untreated) healthy people were included as reference. Measures related to intensity and consistency between hands were extracted.
Results
T-PEMF treatment decreased coherence between hands in the PD group with unilateral postural tremor. The unilateral postural tremor PD group was clinically less affected by the disease than the bilateral postural tremor PD group. However, no differences were found between T-PEMF treatment and placebo on measures related to intensity or consistency when all people with PD were included in the analyses. Peak power decreased and tremor intensity tended to decrease in both treatment groups.
Conclusions
Eight weeks of T-PEMF treatment reduced coherence between hands in the unilateral postural tremor EP group, whereas no effect of T-PEMF treatment was found in the entire EP group. The unilateral postural tremor group was clinically less affected than the bilateral postural tremor group, suggesting that early initiation of treatment may be beneficial. Theoretically, the decreased coherence between the hands could be due to a response to neural treatment that increases interhemispheric inhibition. However, this requires further study to determine. Studies of even longer treatment periods would be of interest.
References:
Trial registration
ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02125032. Registered 29 April 2014, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02125032?term=NCT02125032&rank=1
