Approximately two thousand delegates from all over the world gathered on July 28th in Helsinki, Finland, for the XIV International Congress on Parkinson's Disease. Among the scientists honored or memorialized were pioneer basic scientists Oleh Hornykiewicz (Vienna) and Gerald Cohen (New York). Early morning seminars were taught by movement disorders specialists, bringing the latest symptomatic treatments to the attention of clinicians. Topics for these seminars included drug therapy, surgical procedures and updates on differentiating classic PD from the various parkinson-plus syndromes. Highlights of the meeting included talks on risk factors such as inherited and acquired traits, and the possibilities of neuroprotection (saving the cells that remain in the patient's brain) and neuroregeneration (various methods of reviving cells that are damaged but not lost). It was most interesting to note the presentations on quality of life (QOL), aimed at bringing to patients and their caregivers full knowledge of the disease, its ramifications and the many therapeutic methods of dealing with the disorder.
