Laura,
NIH is trying to put money or has done so for PD research, may not be at the same scale as AIDS. Following information is from NIH archives, budget for 2001-2005 which I thought was very comprehensive. Take look at the some of the people who contributed to this proposal. Now the sad part is it almost ten years, where are we now? How many items on this agenda are completed, if so, what did we get out of this? If I look into this deeply, I am sure I will find all the information I need, money was spent and research was done, papers are published.........yet nothing new showed up in the market for a patient. Why is it? Where is the road block? I think thats what we need to focus on.

I dont have any statistics on this statement I am making, so I may be wrong, but I will say it anyway. For most clinical studies, patient recruitment is a big problem. Of the 10 or so clinical studies I participated in (which are all non-invasive psychology and cognition type studies and sleep disorders) at the university, the researchers had a tough time recruiting patients. Could this be one of the reasons clinical studies donot succeed?

I donot have answers to these questions, just have suggestions to get some answers. But NIH is not exactly knocking on my door asking for my opinon either! Am I exhibiting a PD trait, apathy!!!!!!may be!

Girija


Dept OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Parkinson's Disease Research Agenda

Ruth L. Kirschstein, M.D.
Acting Director, NIH

March 2000

Contents:

* Congressional Report Language
* Executive summary
* Introduction

* Parkinson's disease research agenda
o Understanding Parkinson's disease
+ Using genetics to understand Parkinson's disease
+ Epidemiology to determine risk factors for Parkinson's disease
+ Life and death of neurons involved in Parkinson's disease
+ Neural circuits in Parkinson's disease
o Developing new treatments for Parkinson's disease
+ Pharmacological approaches
+ Deep brain stimulation and other surgical approaches
+ Cell implantation
+ Gene therapy
+ Rehabilitation
+ Outcomes research and evidence based medicine
o Creating new research capabilities
+ High throughput drug screening
+ Array technologies
+ Models of Parkinson's disease
+ Biomarkers
+ Neuroimaging
+ Brain banks and other repositories
o Enhancing the research process
+ Ethical issues
+ Innovative funding mechanisms
+ Public-private partnerships
* Conclusions
* Appendix
o Professional judgment estimates
o List of participants
o NIH Staff

CONGRESSIONAL REPORT LANGUAGE

This report has been prepared by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the Department of Health and Human Services in response to the following requests from Congress.

In its report on the