Today, nearly 167,000 people suffer from Parkinson’s disease and each year, 25,000 new patients are treated for this disease.
According to the latest projections from Public Health France, en 2030, approximately 260,000 people should be treated for Parkinson’s disease in France. To combat the many misunderstandings that still surround the disease, the association of patients France Parkinson wanted to shed light on how we perceive Parkinson’s. And that makes them preconceived ideas against which patients must fight!
Parkinson’s disease mainly affects retirees
FALSE
8 out of 10 French people think that the disease only affects the elderly. In reality, Parkinson’s is declared on average in the fifties, in professionally active people and even affects patients under 45 years of age in 10% of cases.
“When you learn from a patient who is not 50 years old that he has Parkinson’s, it is disbelief that predominates in the latter. Yet the figures are clear: the average age of patients with Parkinson’s of diagnosis is only 58 years old” insists Professor Philippe DAMIER, neurologist at the University Hospital of Nantes.
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Tremor is the main symptom of Parkinson’s
FALSE
The tremors are neither the systematic symptoms nor the exclusive symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Each patient has a presentation of the disease which is specific to him and which varies over the years: difficulty in performing movements (called akinesia), stiffness in the joints, gait disorders, digestive and intestinal disorders, etc.
But Parkinson’s disease is also non-motor symptoms that are not directly associated with the disease. “Among these more insidious symptoms” specifies Professor Damier, we find “a great fatigue, partly attributable to the efforts developed by the patient’s brain to compensate for the very significant deficit in dopamine, excessive anxietyand psychological symptoms which may be reactive to the disease and/or related to the disease itself”.
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Parkinson’s disease is not very disabling
FALSE
Parkinson’s disease is a complex disease whose symptoms are not immediately visible. This is why 35% of French people think that it allows a normal life with some more or less disabling symptoms such as a slight tremor of the hands.
The alternation of “on” and “off” periods also makes this disease difficult to understand and to master. The patient must thus face suspicions of simulation, even the intolerance of an entourage tempted to reproach him for an attitude which he imagines complacent vis-à-vis the disease.
But it has a real impact on the daily life, the professional life and even the married life of the patients. “It’s hard to hear “you’re not sick because you’re not shaking”, while every minute we fight against pain and loss of autonomy“ underlines a patient, member of France Parkinson.
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There is no cure for Parkinson’s disease
FALSE
Admittedly, we cannot yet cure Parkinson’s, but the disease can be cured, which improves the quality of life. The neurologist prescribes drug treatments aimed at overcoming the lack of dopamine:
- either by mimicking the action of dopamine
- either by administering a substance that will be transformed into dopamine
- or by giving a substance that blocks the breakdown of dopamine.
But some of these treatments can cause side effects such as behavioral problems.
In some young patients who are very embarrassed by the disease, surgical treatment is proposed which consists of implanting electrodes in the brain to deep brain stimulation.
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