A study reveals certain symptoms that might alert to the underlying development of Parkinson’s disease.
More than 160,000 French people have Parkinson’s disease and 25,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. This chronic disease evolves slowly with a preclinical phase preceding the appearance of the first symptoms. Typically, patients are asymptomatic until 50-70% of dopamine neurons are destroyed. At this point, the brain is no longer able to compensate.
Tremors and memory loss
According to new research, conducted by Queen Mary University of London (UK), two specific symptoms are warning signs of the onset of Parkinson’s disease. These findings were published in JAMA Neurology. Indeed, hearing loss and epilepsy would be the first manifestations of this progressive neurodegenerative disease.
This discovery would make it possible to make a rapid diagnosis and to intervene early in order to improve the quality of life of patients. By identifying people at risk, it would then be possible to anticipate patients at high risk of developing Parkinson’s disease even before the appearance of other symptoms.
To reach these conclusions, the scientists analyzed data from the care records of more than one million patients. For the first time, a study focused on a diverse and underprivileged population. “This is the first study on the pre-diagnostic phase of Parkinson’s disease in such a diverse population (…). Until now, people from minority ethnic groups and disadvantaged areas have been vastly underrepresented in Parkinson’s disease research.“, explains the lead author of the study, Dr. Cristina Simonet, neurologist and doctoral student at Queen Mary University.
“It’s too long to wait for patients”
Parkinson’s disease is often reduced to symptoms such as tremors and memory loss, yet according to this study, these manifestations appear up to ten and five years before diagnosis.
“People see their GPs with symptoms but often don’t get a diagnosis until five to ten years later. Tremor, for example, is one of the most recognizable symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, but it was observed ten years before the eventual diagnosis in our study. It’s too long to wait for patients“, summarizes Dr. Alastair Noyce, co-author of this study.
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