TITLE:
Two Cases of Parkinson’s Disease for Which Dental Treatment Was Effective
AUTHORS:
Yoshiro Fujii
KEYWORDS:
Parkinson’s Disease, Dental Treatment, Trigeminal Nerve, Substantia Nigra, Midbrain
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Parkinson's Disease,
Vol.9 No.2,
April
24,
2020
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to document the
improvement observed in two cases of Parkinson’s disease (PD) after dental
treatment. The first subject is a man in his 60s with severe Parkinson’s
disease; medication has not been very effective in this case. Prior to
treatment, he was unable to stand without support due torigidity. Just after removing as much of the dental infection as possible, he was able to walk, albeit slowly, and
as a result of continuing treatment, one month later, the symptoms had
significantly improved. The second subjectis a woman in
her 40s, who became aware of joint stiffness seven years ago, and was later
diagnosed with PD independently at three hospitals. Her main symptoms were
rigidity, knee pain, and speech disorder. The dopamine medication worked well
against rigidity, but the symptoms reappeared after the medication stopped
working. Her condition was significantly improved just after one tooth with an
apical lesion was extracted. Although the underlying mechanism has not been
clarified, I hypothesize that, at least in these cases, negative signals that
passed through the trigeminal nerve to the midbrain affected predominantly the
dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra of the midbrain. Removal of the
harmful signals from the oral area resulted in normalization of the substantia
nigra. Further research should be promoted with dental and medical cooperation.