The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Parkinson’s disease: wrong notions, right perspectives

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 16, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Parkinson’s disease: wrong notions, right perspectives

R.Sujatha

25 per cent of those suffering from PD are in their Twenties

CHENNAI: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is degeneration of the brain that affects motor, cognitive and behavioural aspects of a person’s life. These aspects may be affected in various permutations and combinations.

“You can have PD with no cognitive (like ability to plan tasks, make judgement) and behavioural defects,” says neurologist E.S. Krishnamoorthy. Though normally believed to be a disease among the ageing population, even the young can be affected, say doctors.

“Young Onset PD is like diabetes or hypertension and can be controlled for five to 15 years with medicines. Such persons can carry on with their normal life without anyone ever learning about their condition,” says Apollo Hospital neurosurgeon Paresh H. Doshi.

Twentyfive per cent of those suffering from PD are in their twenties and the quality of life is seriously altered. But very few are even aware about the existence of YOPD and as a result, persons suffering from the disease are shunned by family. But treatment is at hand and a person should not be burdened by PD, says Dr. Doshi.

Medical options

“When these patients take a pill, they are like a battery charged toy that has been switched on but when the effect of the pill wears off they become immobile. It takes five hours for the effect of the medicine to wear off,” he says.

And then the symptoms return, much to their embarrassment. Prolonged use of the pills could also result in sideeffects such as hallucination and fluctuation in the ‘on-off’ condition.

Among the treatment methods is the surgical option in which an electrode is implanted in the thumbnail-sized subthalamic nucleus in the brain. The surgery, first performed in 1994, was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2002. Since then it is being performed in India.

In the elders, the diagnosis is often late as the symptoms, including cognitive and behavioural changes are mistakenly believed to be part of ageing process, says geriatrician V.S. Natarajan.

“The disease is often under-reported. Those who have severe involuntary movement can be cured with surgical intervention even in advanced stage. But they must undergo physiotherapy simultaneously to ensure early recovery.” But these are only symptomatic treatment methods, he says.

Irregular sleep patterns

Rapid eye movement behavioural disorder may also be indicative of the onset of PD. A person who sleeps eight hours will experience periods of deep sleep that last from 90 to 120 minutes. These periods, known as rapid eye movement (REM), occur three times in an eight-hour sleep.

Sometimes during REM a person could have vivid dreams, sleep walk or exhibit violent behaviour that makes them injury-prone. Such behaviour is found more often in people after the age of 50. “Such behavioural disorder can occur 10-15 years before the onset of Parkinson’s disease,” says Nithra Institute of Sleep Sciences director N. Ramakrishnan. PD can also produce fragmented sleep patterns resulting in non-refreshing sleep with periodic limb movement where the legs and arms swing quite significantly, he says.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu