Traditional chinese medicine improves activities of daily living in parkinson's disease

We evaluated the effects of a traditional chinese medicine (tcm),named zeng-xiao an-shen zhi-chan 2 (zaz2),on patients with parkinson's disease (pd). among 115 patients with idiopathic pd enrolled (mean age,64.7 ± 10.2 years old),110 patients (m = 65,f = 45; mean age,64.9 ± 10.7 years old) completed the study. patients took either zaz2 (n = 59) or placebo granule (n = 56) in a blind manner for 13 weeks while maintaining other anti-parkinson medications unchanged. all participants wore a motion logger,and we analyzed the power-law temporal autocorrelation of the motion logger records taken on 3 occasions (before,one week,and 13 weeks after the drug administration). drug efficacy was evaluated with the conventional unified parkinson disease rating scale (updrs),as well as the power-law exponent,which corresponds to the level of physical activity of the patients. zaz2 but not placebo granule improved the awake-sleep rhythm,the updrs part ii,part ii+iii,and part iv scores,and the values. the results indicate that zaz2 improved activities of daily living (adl) of parkinsonism and,thus,is a potentially suitable drug for long-term use. copyright © 2011 weidong pan et al.