 Full programme transcript >>
Parkinson's Disease
Dr Mark Porter investigates the latest medical advances in understanding Parkinson's disease.
His guest in the studio is Dr Sarah Salvage, a member of the Degenerative Diseases Research Group at King’s College, London.
A new awareness
Medical students have traditionally been taught to recoginse Parkinson's by three symptoms: slowness of movement, stiffness and tremor, or the shakes.
However, as Neurologist Dr Ray Chaudhuri and specialist nurse Alison Forbes tell Mark, the disease can also lead to other problems that are often missed, such as sleep problems and constipation.
Parkinson's in younger people
Parkinson's disease is traditionally thought of as only affecting the over-fifties, but this isn't always the case.
Tom Issacs, founder of the Cure Parkinson's Trust, first noticed symptoms in his early twenties, and was diagnosed at 27.
He and his wife Lyndsey describe life with the condition
Brain surgery
Neurostimulation uses high frequency electrical currents to block the irregular nerve impulses which cause distressing side effects known as dyskinesia.
Professor Tipu Aziz, consultant neurosurgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, describes how it all works, and why the wires can’t be put in under a general anaesthetic.
Cell transplants
Consultant neurologist Roger Barker from Cambridge University’s Centre for Brain Repair explains the history of cell transplants into the brain and how there is new hope for the future. |
30 min
