Tool to zap Parkinson's, Fibromyalgia pain

The "light therapy" gadget the size of a TV remote has been developed by Australian researchers working with medical technology firm Symbyx and can be used at home to relieve pain and inflammation.

"You don't need eyewear, you don't need to be a trained technician," says chief executive Wayne Markman.

"The safety is rock solid - you can't hurt a person with infrared light, it's at the benign end of the light spectrum.

"On the efficacy, we still have work to do to prove it to the neurologists."

The technology already has regulatory approval in Australia, the United Kingdom, European Union and New Zealand, where users are experiencing cognitive and motor improvements, Dr Markman says.

The next step is getting clinical data to satisfy the US Food and Drug Administration.

"If you come and you show them Australian trial data, they say you need a North American cohort," the former Wall Street investment banker explains.

"The other purpose is this will hopefully sway the neurologists - we know it works because we've been doing this for five years with 2000-plus patients."

In Canada, leading neuroscientist and clinician Anita Saltmarche will test the effectiveness of the medical-grade light therapy - also known as photobiomodulation - delivered with Symbyx devices and treatment protocols.

"Neurologists won't push anything unless you've got a double-blind, randomised control trial, which is the gold standard," Dr Markman says.

"It's scientific, it's rigorous and shows the treatment arm does better than the placebo arm."

Trials building on previous Australian research will also begin in Adelaide, where Markman is working with Flinders University's Joyce Ramos and Olivia Nassaris, who is a trailblazer in Parkinson's at The Hospital Research Foundation charity that supports sufferers in South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Dr Markman, whose father, aunt and father-in-law all died with Parkinson's, says the bottom line is simple: "We need to generate as much compelling data as possible."

Both new randomised trials, with placebo arms, will be run over 52 weeks and are designed to measure the impact of the therapy on both motor and cognitive deficit in Parkinson's sufferers.

A helmet-style device for the medical-grade light therapy is being tested in a separate trial in Sydney.

Symbyx also has Therapeutic Goods Administration approval for treating the chronic pain experienced by those with Fibromyalgia.

The long-term condition, which mostly affects women, is experienced as widespread pain and tenderness in the body, along with fatigue and often anxiety and depression.

"When you have chronic pain, you have a heightened pain conduit between the receptor and the sensory part of the brain, which interprets stimulus as painful," Dr Markman says.

This "super-highway" registers every stimulus as a pain sensation even if it's just a light touch and the laser treatment is designed to increased the tolerance for normal stimulus.

"It's actually quietening down the whole nervous system, which is why we're having such amazing effects on people with chronic pain or Fibromyalgia, he says.

But Parkinson's is the world's fastest growing neurological disorder and the second most common disease of the nervous system in Australia after dementia.

It is also increasingly an early onset disease. One in five Australian sufferers are under 50 and 10 per cent are diagnosed before turning 40.

Lake Macquarie-based Chen Ong uses exercise, diet, acupuncture and a Symbyx light therapy device to stabilise her Parkinson's.

"I was diagnosed ... two and a half years ago and I had a father who suffered it very badly in a very negative way," she says.

While many Parkinson's patients report one or more family members with the disease, scientists say in most cases, an interaction of genetic and environmental factors is at its cause.

But no two people with Parkinson's disease have the same experience and various treatments won't work for everyone.

"When I was diagnosed, I decided I'm going to tackle this illness and prolong it as long as I can and keep myself very stable with it," says Mrs Ong who is 56.

"So instead of just being medicated, I decided I would research some alternative therapies.

"There's no cure so I know I'm fighting a losing battle but who knows how long that battle will be?"

The condition results from damage to the nerve cells that produce dopamine in the brain, a chemical vital for muscle control and movement.

But about half the body's required dopamine is thought to be produced in the gastrointestinal tract.

Ong uses the battery-operated light therapy device at home four to five times a week.

"The unit stimulates the gut dopamine and tries to send it up to the brain and restore what is gone," she says.

"No one can see that obviously, it's just a matter of how well the Parkinson's sufferer relates to the actual therapy."

Alongside the trials, the paperwork required by the US FDA is already underway and a capital raising is planned.

Symbyx is also eyeing Singapore as a gateway market for Southeast Asia.

"The gut-brain axis is what we're talking about," Dr Markman says.

"It's relief because we're not restoring the brain's ability to regenerate those neurons in the basal ganglia (in the base of the brain that control movement) which die prematurely - they stop producing dopamine.

"But we know your gut, the intestine, produces half of the dopamine and 85 per cent of your seratonin.

"And if you can stimulate that development in the gut, it does the heavy lifting - it compensates for what you've lost upstairs in the brain."

Australian Associated Press