Parkinson Disease: Diagnosis and Treatment

Parkinson is a kind of mental disease in which a special set of neurons in the brain get destroyed. These neurons help in binding veins around the brain and they have a huge number of chemical signals called dopamine that helps in operating the brain. Due to destruction of these neurons, the patient starts losing control over his various body parts.

Because the body starts shivering, balancing the body becomes extremely difficult. Base Ganglia, a part of human brain, gets affected because of this and the affected person always keeps on shuddering. The brain loses control over the body and nerve cells starts getting damaged.

The very first symptom of Parkinson disease is shivering of hands. Then face and other body parts starts feeling hard. As such, the patient feels disability in proving work. One thing to notice about Parkinson is that it affects old people only. There are very rare chances of it affecting the youth, however some cases of Parkinson disease has also been seen in youth.

Treatment for Parkinson’s

Research has helped a lot in controlling the Parkinson disease. Now this disease can be controlled by Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning. Patients are relying more and more on this technique. PET scanning helps in knowing the damaged neurons and their ability to communicate with other portions of the body. This helps in estimating the extent of neuron damaged and check if this is due to Parkinson. Treatment begins after the right cause is known.

Exact treatment for the Parkinson disease has not been yet developed and many medicines are used to eliminate the symptoms. The problem associated with taking medicines is that they stop reacting after few years.

Another technique called Deep Brain Simulation is used in which after damaged cells are being identified, the cells get stimulated. Till now, only this surgery technique has been used effectively in dealing with Parkinson disease.