Parkinson’s Europe member association Parkinson Italia (ONLUS) is playing a prominent supportive role in Preserving the Brain: A Call to Action. The initiative by the Prada Foundation focuses on the importance of prevention and early treatment of incurable diseases including Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, ALS, and Multiple Sclerosis, as well as Parkinson’s.
Its goal is to bring together different stakeholders including research centres, academics, brain health organisations, patient associations and politicians to promote ways in which people can protect their brain health.
It began in October last year with a two-day scientific conference and has continued with an exhibition and a series of talks taking place at the Prada Foundation in Milan until 7 April.
Preserving the brain
In mid-December last year, as part of the Preserving the Brain initiative, Parkinson Italia led a one-day event about Parkinson’s.
During this event, it shared images of four people with Parkinson’s. Photographed by photojournalist Giovanni Diffidenti, these were: Carla Ardau, a computer scientist who developed a love for climbing following her Parkinson’s diagnosis; Valentina Margio, a pregnant woman who is living with Parkinson’s; Paolo Rota, who has learned to fly everywhere with his flight simulator; and Massimiliano lachini, president of AIGP (Associazione Italiana Giovani Parkinsoniani) since 2024, who has presented a weekly poetry and music show called Alta Voce (Loud Voice) on radioparkies.com since 2020.
The event, presented by Italian actor Claudio Beccari and available to watch on YouTube, also featured two roundtable discussions moderated by journalist Nicoletta Carbone. Subjects covered during the day included the importance of early diagnosis and how Parkinson’s affects daily life. Treatment-wise, the roles of integrated therapies and multidisciplinary teams were discussed.
The event also highlighted the importance of community support and the role of family members in managing the disease, as well as the need for comprehensive approaches that take both the physical and emotional aspects of caring for a person with Parkinson’s into account. Advanced treatments like deep brain stimulation, and the role of research in advancing treatments, were also explored.
Parkinson’s Disease: A disease that is a 100 diseases
The stories of Carla, Valentina, Paolo and Massimiliano were first shared during Parkinson Italia’s ‘Parkinson: una malattia che è 100 malattie’ (‘Parkinson’s Disease: A disease that is a 100 diseases’) press campaign, which was launched on Italy’s National Parkinson’s Day on 30 November and is supported by pharmaceutical company Zambon S.p.A.
This campaign was created by Roberto Caselli, who has been living with Parkinson’s for 16 years, and Elisa Roncoroni, who said: “There is Carla, who challenges the limits of height and Parkinson’s with sport climbing, while Paolo uses the flight simulator to soar ever higher. Valentina caresses her belly during pregnancy, while Massimiliano looks straight into the eyes of the disease without fear. To bring to light the true, multiple faces of Parkinson’s and dispel the false myths that accompany it, we have chosen to focus on what unites them all. We have therefore focused on true stories of courage and patients’ reactions to show the true nature of the disease and restore its complexity.”
Giangi Milesi, the President of Parkinson Italia, who lives with Parkinson’s, said: “Even today there is a lot of confusion about Parkinson’s, and people think that its only consequences are tremors, movement and balance problems – false beliefs that I myself came up against when – after the diagnosis – I experienced the many different manifestations of the disease. Yet, in these various situations there is an essential common denominator: the desire to react and pursue one’s life goals and passions. Hence the choice to give life to an institutional campaign that, thanks to the telling of true stories of reaction, can reveal the many different faces of Parkinson’s and thus dispel the clichés that characterise it.”
