When Parkinson’s disease is mentioned, we immediately think of tremors and movement difficulties.
However, this pathology which affects nearly 10 million people worldwide, is also accompanied by less visible but just as disabling troubles: memory problems, depression, anxiety.
A team from the University of Geneva and the Geneva university hospitals has just made a surprising discovery: the side of the body where the first symptoms appear to predict what these “hidden” disorders will be.
A disease that never begins on both sides both
Parkinson’s disease has an unknown feature of the general public: it always begins asymmetrically.
The first signs – tremors, muscle stiffness, slowness of gestures – affects only one side of the body. This asymmetry is not trivial because it reflects the dysfunction of a specific hemisphere of the brain.
When the symptoms appear on the right side of the body, it is the left hemisphere of the brain that is affected, and vice versa.
By analyzing 80 studies carried out in the past fifty years, Geneva researchers have discovered that this initial asymmetry largely determines the future evolution of the disease.
Patients whose symptoms begin on the right side more often develop severe cognitive disorders, with an increased risk of dementia.
Their memory, their reasoning capacity and their attention deteriorate more quickly.
Conversely, people in whom the disease begins on the left side are more confronted with psychiatric disorders: depression, anxiety …
These manifestations, although less spectacular than motor problems, can considerably alter the quality of life of patients and their entourage.
To personalized medicine
This study, published in the journal npj Parkinson’s diseaseopens the way to a more personalized management of Parkinson’s disease.
“These results constitute a crucial advance for the study of non -motor symptoms of the disease, long to be a mesestimates,” said Julie Péron, who led this work.
By identifying as from the diagnosis the side of the appearance of the first symptoms, doctors could better anticipate the difficulties to come and orient their patients more quickly to appropriate therapies.
Source : npj Parkinson’s disease
