On Tue 30 Jul, McHutchison wrote:
> 1. What would happen if someone who does not have Parkinson's Disease were to take dr
> ugs for Parkinson's (sinemet, eldepryl) ? Assuming they overcome the nausea and/or ot
> her physical effects, what would be the behaviors?
Hello Diane,
Your question 1 is something which I was curious about some time ago, and I
Discussed it with a neurologist friend of mine. The answer is at first sight (to me),
most surprising, because apart from a slight headache, a normal person would show no
reaction to a dose of Sinemet which would provoke severe dykinesias in a Parkie patient.
The explanation for this result is this: The Dopamine production in a normal brain is
regulated on the basis of need, and in normal circumstances the brain has the capacity
to produce much more dopamine than is required. The production rate is thus controlled
by what I (as a retired Engineer) would call a "feedback loop". So, when the healthy
person takes a Sinemet tablet, the natural dopamine production system simply throttles
back to compensate for the extra input, and total Dopamine levels remain as required.
Regarding your other questions, I can only speculate. Your father's visual problems are
new to me, but we have to remember that PD affects each of us in different ways, simply
because it appears that the specific neural pathways which get zapped by PD are
apparently chosen on a random basis. I suppose that it is possible for the strange effects
which you describe to be caused by PD, although they are new to me.
On the question of whether your father really has PD, perhaps the best definition of true
PD is simply "Does it respond to levodopa ?" If the answer is Yes, then the patient has
PD - He may have something else as well, but he has got PD. The other alternatives which
you mention are possible, but diagnosis is a very difficult art - and I mean art, not a
science. It is not much comfort, but a neuro pathologist told me that the only
definitive diagnosis is that carried out after the patient has died !
Regards, Brian Collins <[log in to unmask]>
