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Linda Neilsen wrote: > > I lost my Dad last November. The copy of the autopsy came back to us in late February. We learned that throughout the 18 years of his disease, he did not have PD at all. Instead, he had something called Progressive Supernuclear Palsy (PSP). PSP is a rare form of palsy that initially creates the same symptoms of PD and, therefore, caused the PD diagnosis. > > We were given an article about PSP by Dad's neurologist after he read the report but, whoever copied it for him missed the middle page or pages of the article. The pages we received had no identification of the publication from which it came and his office can't find it again. > > Soooooo, I'm asking if any of you out there have heard of "progressive supernuclear palsy" and could refer me to a layman's description of the disease, it's impact, it's treatment and it progress? > Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)is one of several neurodegenerative diseases related to Parkinson's Disease (PD) by the fact that in the initial stages the movement impairment is a bit similar. Some of these further mimic Parkinson's in their response to dopamine therapy, but not for long. Little is known about PSP because it is rare, only about 1/10 as frequent as PD, and most of what is known concerns only its diagnostic distinction from PD. Observation of a peculiar set of symptoms in several patients caused PSP to be named as a separate disease. The most prominent symptom, usually tested during the patient's first visit to a neurologist, is inability to direct the gaze upward without moving one's head. Unlike PD, PSP has no known treatment. For a little more information, there is a short paragraph in The Merck Manual, a popular handbook for doctors. The scientific research literature is also scanty; in the past 3 years or so, I have run across only about a half dozen related articles. You can find these in the NIH (government) Medline archive if you know how to do so, otherwise I can send you (off-list) the few references from my files. Cheers, Joe J. R. Bruman (818) 789-3694 3527 Cody Road Sherman Oaks, CA 91403-5013