One of the most challenging parts of diagnosing a movement disorder is that there are many of them to choose from: Parkinson’s disease, multiple systems atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy, Lewy body dementia, essential tremor, ALS. What these conditions have in common, however, could help researchers develop treatments for more than one.
“The obvious commonality is that these are all age-dependent disorders. They’re all coming on mid to late in life, so there’s something about the aging process that drives all of them,” says David Standaert, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Neurology at The University of Alabama at Birmingham “Another common feature is that there are misfolded proteins.”
David talks to MJFF Contributing Editor Dave Iverson in our latest podcast about how the biology and genetics of some of these diseases overlaps.
“I think what’s emerging in this field is that the immune reaction is contributing more to the process of cell injury than we thought before,” he says.
Watch our webinar on the similarities between movement disorders.
