catching it early
New ways doctors are diagnosing Parkinson’s disease
02:28 PM PST on Wednesday, February 11, 2009
By JEAN ENERSEN / KING 5 News
Every nine minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It’s a neurological disorder that starts as a tremor and ends in death.
Catching it early is key. Now there are several new ways doctors are diagnosing it.
The key to helping people with Parkinson’s: diagnose it before symptoms show….
I do not understand why it is so often said that “catching it early is key,” as if there were a treatment for Parkinson’s that, if administered early, would make an enormous difference in the outcome. I’m aware of only one drug, Azilect, that has clearly demonstrated neuroprotective properties that will slow the course of disease. Azilect seems to me to be the best and possibly the only medical reason for early diagnosis. Am I missing something?
I think a year or two ago, a team at NY Beth Israel identified a marker for PD that shows up in a blood test, yet to my knowledge there has been no rush to early screening. The down sides to being identified early as having Parkinson’s (e.g., diminished insurability and employability) may outweigh the possible benefits.
If I had known 5 years earlier than my diagnosis that PD was working on my brain, would I have done some things differently? Probably. Would I have enjoyed the next 5 years more? Certainly not. Would my health outcomes have been markedly different? I doubt it. Overall, would I have been better off? I just don’t know. But I think that to say early detection is key overstates the potential advantages of knowing early on that you have a disease for which the remedies are few and limited.
Show me a cure, or at least a powerful new treatment. Then I’ll understand the benefits of early detection.
3 years ago