Download "An Introduction to Parkinson's Disease," by Joseph H. Friedman MD (PDF file)

Parkinson's Disease
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is common. It affects about 500,000 - one million Americans, or about 1% of people over the age of 60. After Alzheimer’s disease, it is the second most common progressive, neurological disorder in the US. In the state of Rhode Island alone, with a population of only one million people, there are an estimated 1-2,000 people with PD.  Although there is a large body of research on PD, we still don’t know what causes it and we even have some trouble diagnosing it at times.

Parkinson’s disease is a disorder that affects small regions in the brain that control movement, posture and balance. It is a complex disease that has many different symptoms, so that not everyone with the condition suffers from the same problems.

The more that PD is studied, the more intricate we find the condition to be. Only over the past 15 years or so have doctors started to investigate PD’s affect on behavior. Treatment of PD has focused until recently only on the movements, but we now see the disorder in a more realistic, holistic way.  Quality of life has become a more central focus as we deal with a disease we cannot yet cure.