Parkinson's Disease Research Paper

Parkinson’s disease or “the shaking palsy” is a degenerative disorder that attacks the Central Nervous System and slowly destroys motor and coronation skills. Parkinson’s disease most likely develops after the age of fifty, but sometimes, it can also occur in young adults or sometimes very rarely in small children. Having a family member with Parkinson’s disease slightly increases your chances of obtaining this disease. Parkinson’s disease is one of the larger groups of neurological disorders. In a normal brain, nerve cells produce the chemical dopamine which transmits signals to the brain for smooth movement of the muscles. For people with Parkinson’s disease, at least eighty percent of these chemical producing cells are damaged. With the damaging or death of these brain cells, the nerve cells fire randomly leaving the patient unable to control the movements of their muscles.
Different individuals with Parkinson’s can acquire different symptoms. Symptoms most commonly start on one side of the body and usually remain worse even after symptoms progress to the other side of the body. Some of the classic signs and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease are: tremors (which are most common in about 70 percent of individuals with Parkinson’s) Bradykinesia, (which is the slow movement of the body) and impaired balance (which commonly happens because individuals with Parkinson’s develop a stooped posture). Other symptoms beyond movement are common, but not everyone with Parkinson’s will develop these symptoms. Some of these symptoms include restless sleep or daytime fatigue, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, oily skin and dandruff.
There are many types of ways that Parkinson’s can be diagnosed. Sometimes it is hard because the symptoms are difficult to assess, particularly in the elderly, but for the doctor and the patient the symptoms become clearer as the illness progresses. Some of the tests include tapping your finger and thumb together or tapping your foot. This test is done to check for slow movement. Another test that is done is to help diagnose is having the patient relax their hands to observe the severity of their tremors. Brain scans are not generally used to diagnose Parkinson’s disease, but rather rule out other conditions.
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