September 30, 2025  
University of Florida (UF) Health News
By Mallory Bachmann

Gainesville, Florida — A national study of Parkinson’s disease patients has found that deep brain stimulation — a medical technique long championed at University of Florida Health — offers improved symptoms and quality of life, with benefits that last.

Parkinson’s is a movement disorder of the nervous system that worsens over time. It often begins with barely noticeable symptoms, such as a subtle tremor, that later can render patients unable to walk or speak. It affects about 1 million people in the United States.

The trial, conducted across 23 movement disorder centers, was the largest prospective long-term look at deep brain stimulation, or DBS, for Parkinson’s disease. During the procedure, surgeons implant electrodes in a patient’s brain to deliver electrical pulses that can be fine-tuned over time.

Nearly 200 patients received DBS implants and were placed in a group that received immediate stimulation or a control group whose devices remained inactive for the first 12 weeks. After this phase, all participants received active stimulation and were followed for five years. Ultimately, 137 patients completed the study.

The study’s results were reported Sept. 15 in the journal JAMA Neurology.

“This is one of the very few randomized, prospective trials of deep brain stimulation with long-term follow-up. For the first time, we can clearly see that the benefits of DBS, improvements in motor symptoms, reduced medication needs and better quality of life are sustained at five years,” said Adolfo Ramirez-Zamora, M.D., a neurology professor and division chief of movement disorders at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health, who collected and analyzed data and reviewed the study’s findings.

The study tracked safety outcomes, with infection emerging as the most common but still rare serious risk. Ten patients died during the five-year follow-up period, but none of the deaths were related to the DBS treatment.

These results add to the growing evidence that DBS is safe and effective when performed at experienced centers, Ramirez-Zamora said, and should shift the way clinicians view DBS.

“DBS used to be seen as a last resort, but we now know it provides the most sustained benefit when offered in the moderate stages of Parkinson’s disease, when motor complications are the main source of disability,” he said.

Ramirez-Zamora said the next step is to expand access to DBS to more patients.

“We know this therapy is effective and safe,” he said. “The challenge now is making sure it reaches more people at the right stage of disease, when it can have the greatest and most lasting impact.”

Michael S. Okun, M.D., a distinguished professor and director of the Fixel Institute, has worked on DBS techniques at UF for more than 20 years, in collaboration with Kelly Foote, M.D., the institute’s co- director.

Okun emphasized that the findings hint at what DBS will look like in years to come.

“The future of DBS will be about smarter devices, more personalized programming and broader access,” Okun said. “Studies like this one not only prove the therapy’s durability but also set the stage for the next generation of technologies to improve patients’ lives.”