VCU Parkinson's and Movement Disorders 2024 by the Numbers

By Sean Gorman

For those with cervical dystonia, botulinum toxin injections are a common treatment that help address the symptoms of a disorder that constricts their neck muscles, frequently causing pain while limiting their range of motion and impacting their posture. Although the injections do provide some relief of dystonia, they can often cause intolerable side effects, and the benefits of the injections are limited and temporary — with positive effects typically wearing off before the next set of injections.

Another treatment, deep brain stimulation, can be used when cervical dystonia symptoms do not respond to standard therapies, but it’s an invasive procedure with its own drawbacks, including side effects and limited benefits.

A $500,000 investigator-initiated research trial at the VCU Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center is exploring a new way to help relieve cervical dystonia symptoms in those individuals who continue to have symptoms that disrupt their everyday life.

PMDC Director Brian Berman, M.D., the study’s principal investigator, says the double-blind placebo-controlled trial will gather preliminary findings on whether the drug valbenazine could be a safe and effective treatment for chronic dystonia symptoms when paired with botulinum toxin injections.

“New treatment approaches for cervical dystonia are desperately needed to alleviate symptoms and improve the quality of life for the many people who suffer from this incurable and disabling neurological disorder,” Berman says.

While beneficial in treating tardive dyskinesia, a disorder of involuntary movements in a patient’s face or body caused by antipsychotic medications, valbenazine has not previously undergone evaluation in a placebo-controlled clinical study in cervical dystonia patients, Berman notes.

Research Could Unlock Further Study 

Berman is pursuing the research through an “investigator-initiated research trial” that he proposed. That approach provides medical professionals a path to get the ball rolling on a potential new therapy by generating initial findings that can become the foundation for a larger and more extensive clinical trial. 

“It’s the way doctors and researchers can propose something new that a pharmaceutical company isn’t ready to invest a lot of money in through a big clinical trial until they see some promising sample data,” Berman says. 

Berman’s hypothesis is that valbenazine will not only be well tolerated by patients, but that it will also lessen the severity of their cervical dystonia symptoms during the 26-week trial. If the results are promising, that could open the door to more research on the drug’s usefulness in alleviating symptoms in cervical dystonia patients.