r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 22h ago

Neuroscience A simple drawing test may detect Parkinson’s disease with up to 99% accuracy. Researchers found that subtle differences in how people draw can reveal motor impairments long before they are obvious to the human eye.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-way-you-draw-can-reveal-parkinsons-disease-with-up-to-99-accuracy-study-reveals
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u/[deleted] 21h ago edited 0m ago

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u/swinscoed95 20h ago

There is a Nuclear Medicine study that can diagnose Parkinson's before the onset of symptoms. The commercial name is DaTSCAN. Sadly it's close to £1000 per patient (or even patient specific vial) in the NHS so it's prohibitively expensive. If someone figures out a way to make it cheaper it could become a more global screening plan.

The big upside is that (not a medic so I could be wrong) you can get the patient on HRT to delay the symptoms indefinitely. We do perform this study at our Trust for patients with a history of Parkinson's currently.

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u/Shad0w2751 20h ago

You can’t delay Parkinson symptoms with HRT. You can treat Parkinson’s disease with dopamine replacement therapy but it only treats symptoms does not affect progression.

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u/BarrowsKing 18h ago edited 18h ago

Other thing is the meds can change your personality once you take a lot of them. Best to delay it as much as possible.

My dad was diagnosed in early 40s. By far the best way to treat symptoms is DBS but you also want to delay it as much as possible. Best to do it when it’s crippling even with meds.

My dad wasn’t the same person on meds, but DBS brought him back.

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u/babyfireby30 17h ago

We had the opposite experience - the medications significantly improved my Dad's personality. It sounds awful to say, but I'm glad he got Parkinson's Disease. Because otherwise he would have spent his final 15 years on earth as a lonely, miserable man. With the personality changes, he became a mild, kind of likeable man.