Researchers say violent dreams could indicate signalling issues in the brain and be a warning sign of Parkinson’s disease.
John Clowes experiences random bursts of dream-enacting behaviour while he is asleep and when his muscles should be relaxing.
“I was starting to thrash around with my arms and legs in bed,” he told 9News.
“I’d wake up and could almost relive the dream. It was like a cheap Hollywood movie.”
Another test uncovered that Clowes has an impaired sense of smell which can be an early predictor of Parkinson’s disease.
But the biggest red flag is REM sleep behaviour disorder, which does not include sleepwalking.
“If we can’t explain why somebody starts acting out their dreams after the age of 50, their chances of going on and get Parkinson’s disease, or disease like Parkinson’s is 140 times greater than the average person in the population,” Macquarie University Professor of Cognitive Neurology Simon Lewis said.
In a world-first trial, researchers are looking at whether a pill can combat inflammation in the brain, which is a key driver of early disease.
“We want to identify a pathway to a cure so we’re using a short exposure to a drug that we think will reduce the neuroinflammation,” Lewis said.
The aim of targeting this pathway is to save the cells in the brain years before motor symptoms, such as tremors and walking issues, develop.
By that stage, half of the brain’s dopamine-producing cells have already been lost.
Clowes, who has a family history of Parkinson’s, qualified for the trial.
“If I’ve got it, or if I’m going to develop it over time, better they know more about it,” he said.
