Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Sep 26;20(1):129.
doi: 10.1186/s12984-023-01255-z.

Electromagnetic radiation therapy for Parkinson's disease tremor reduction- systematic reviews and Bayesian meta-analyses for comparing the effectiveness of electric, magnetic and light stimulation methods

Seyedeh Marzieh Hosseini #  1 , Sajjad Farashi #  2 , Saeid Bashirian  3   4
Affiliations
Review

Electromagnetic radiation therapy for Parkinson's disease tremor reduction- systematic reviews and Bayesian meta-analyses for comparing the effectiveness of electric, magnetic and light stimulation methods

Seyedeh Marzieh Hosseini et al. J Neuroeng Rehabil. .

Abstract

Purpose: Tremor is one of the key characteristics of Parkinson's disease (PD), leading to physical disabilities and often showing limited responses to pharmacological treatments. To suppress tremors in PD patients, several types of non-invasive and non-pharmacological methods have been proposed so far. In the current systematic review, three electromagnetic-based radiation strategies including electrical stimulation, magnetic stimulation, and light stimulation methods were reviewed and compared.

Methods: Major databases were searched to retrieve eligible studies. For the meta-analysis, a random-effect Bayesian framework was used. Also, heterogeneity between studies was assessed using I2 statistic, prediction interval, and tau2. Publication bias was assessed using funnel plot, and the effectiveness of methods for reducing tremor was compared using network Bayesian meta-analysis.

Results and conclusion: Thirty-one studies were found for qualitative analysis, and 16 studies were found for quantitative synthesis. Based on the suppression ratio, methods can be ordered as electrical stimulation, light therapy, and magnetic stimulation. Furthermore, the results showed that electrical and magnetic stimulation were more effective for tremor suppression at early stages of PD, while light therapy was found to be more effective during the later stages of PD.

Keywords: Electric stimulation; Light therapy; Magnetic stimulation; Parkinson’s disease; Systematic review; Tremor reduction.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PRISMA flow diagram for searching procedure of the current study
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
shows the box plots for the suppression ratio (%) of different methods for tremor suppression. Since the range of reported values for different methods was relatively broad, the median measure was used
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The SUCRA plot for ranking of different methods in tremor suppression
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Farashi S. Distinguishing between Parkinson’s disease patients and healthy individuals using a comprehensive set of time, frequency and time-frequency features extracted from vertical ground reaction force data. Biomed Signal Process Control. 2020;62:102132. doi: 10.1016/j.bspc.2020.102132. - DOI
    1. Farashi S. Analysis of vertical eye movements in Parkinson’s disease and its potential for diagnosis. Appl Intell. 2021;51(11):8260–70. doi: 10.1007/s10489-021-02364-9. - DOI
    1. Riviere CN, Rader RS, Thakor NV. Adaptive cancelling of physiological tremor for improved precision in microsurgery. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 1998;45(7):839–46. doi: 10.1109/10.686791. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ang WT, Pradeep P, Riviere C, editors. Active tremor compensation in microsurgery. Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2004 IEMBS’04 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE; 2004: IEEE. - PubMed
    1. Hosseini S, Al-Jumaily A, Kalhori H, editors. Tremor suppression in wrist joint using active force control method. 9th Australasian Congress on Applied Mechanics, ACAM 2017; 2017.

Publication types