Celia:
I'm shooting a little above my authorized level on this
one, but here goes nevertheless.
Based on some data in my ever increasing stack of stuff:
Ms. Hepburn has secondary or symptomatic parkinsonism. She
lived through and allegedly succumbed to the epidemic of viral
(Von Economo's) encephalitis that occurred around the
1918-1920 time frame. A frequent left-over of this infection
was secondary parkinsonism. Supposedly she still has a
reasonable population of subtantia nigra and hence doesn't
qualify for a full blown diagnosis of our friend... Idiopathic
Parkinson's Disease. One telltale, at least from my point of
view, is that her symptoms don't seem to have worsened in the 3
to 4 decades I've lusted after her.
Many of you who are old enough to have lived through that
period were probably asked, early in your cycle of neurological
interviews, whether you had the virus . It's an important
discriminant in the PD diagnosis process.
dB
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David Barthuli
76H Coffin Avenue
Haverhill, Massachusetts 01830, USA
(508) 521-0879
[log in to unmask]
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