Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that has many systemic and life altering symptoms in the people it effects. Tremor, bradykinesia, and rigidity are physical symptoms which contribute to postural instability and gait abnormalities in many individuals with PD. Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM), a therapy of manual forces directed at addressing musculoskeletal and neurologic restrictions, aims to improve function and homeostasis in patients. Prior studies have shown OMT to improve postural instability in healthy elderly subjects, improve balance in individuals with dizziness, and improve gait in PD. Our research is aimed at determining the way in which OMT can improve the life of people living with PD. The research team spends ten weeks with the study participants, including 12 one-on-one sessions with a physicians and 4 other sessions with medical students. Our preliminary research has shown that the PARK-OMM protocol improves balanceⁱ. It is our hope to further these preliminary findings and show that improvement in balance can help to decrease the number of falls in this population who is prone to falling due to issues with balance, gait and rigidity. We are currently looking at the effect that OMT has on falls, rigidity, pain, physical activity, sleep, tremor and quality of life. Additionally, we are looking for fluctuations in bio-markers specific to PD for pre and post treatment effects. Recently, we met with the makers of a new FDA approved watch for PD. The watch evaluates the individual’s levels of bradykinesia, dyskinesia, sleep and response to medications. We hope that with the implementation of this new watch we will be able to get a broader view of the participant’s daily life and determine better ways to treat these subjects and future people with PD.

Our research is currently enrolling new subjects and consistently looking for ways in which the field of osteopathy can help to improve the lives of people living with PD.

View our presentation poster

If you are interested in finding out more regarding our research studies please contact:

Email – NYITCOM Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine department: comomm1@nyit.edu or call 516-686-3799 and mention Parkinson’s Disease and OMM study – Dr. Sheldon Yao Principal Investigator.

Our publications from this study:

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