He would announce the disease three years before.
150,000 people have Parkinson’s disease in France and 25,000 new cases occur each year. Pathology often progresses in silence. The tremors, frequently associated with the disease in the minds of the general public, only appear when it is already advanced and the dopaminergic neurons reached largely. On the other hand, non -motor signs generally occur several years before the diagnosis. They are not linked to the disease, however they are revealing. A recent American study conducted on more than 6,000 men aged 40 to 75 identifies these signs and associates them with a 23 times higher risk of developing Parkinson.
The researchers have studied seven non -motor indicators such as constipation, sleep disorders, drowsiness during the day, pain, mood disorders, alteration of color vision and loss of smell. After 3 years, 103 people received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. “Our study shows that the combination of key signs and symptoms strongly predicts the future occurrence of clinically manifest parkinson disease” shared the authors.
Three elements stood out: constipation, hyposmy (loss of smell) and disorders of sleeping in paradoxical or “PRBD” (probable REM Sleep Behavior Disorder). This sleep disorder prevents the body from staying motionless during dreams: the person moves, speaks or struggles while sleeping, without being aware of it. Present one of these signs should not be ignored, especially with age. This is even more true if we combine the three. “The men concerned presented a risk 23 times higher to receive a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease over the following 3 years, compared to men not presenting these characteristics” indicated the researchers in Annals of Neurology.
By further pushing their analysis, the authors found that the difficulty in perceiving colors also emerged as a useful secondary marker to better classify people at risk of Parkinson. If these results are confirmed in the general population, they could allow early detection of the disease, as is already the case for certain cancers.
