Not medical advice Parkinson's Companion is an educational synthesis of published literature for study, patient understanding and family caregivers. It does not replace a clinician. Doses and guideline statements are reported as published, not as instructions for any individual, and Parkinson's medicines should never be stopped suddenly.
Parkinson's disease: an animated, cited guide
This page needs JavaScript for its animations. The outline and key answers are below, and every claim in the full version carries a numbered citation.
Not medical advice. Parkinson's Companion is an educational synthesis of published literature. It does not replace a clinician.
What is in it
What Parkinson's is The dopamine pathway Alpha-synuclein and Lewy bodies How it spreads: Braak stages Genes and inheritance Before the tremor Stages and symptoms Diagnosis and the MDS criteria The differential Levodopa and carbidopa Levodopa over time The other medicines Deep-brain stimulation Beyond movement Risk and protection Living with Parkinson's Nursing care Toward a cure History and people Flashcards and mnemonics Quiz Glossary Sources
Part 1 · The disease
The dopamine pathway
Movement depends on a loop that runs from the cortex through the basal ganglia and thalamus and back. Dopamine from a small strip of the midbrain keeps that loop tilted toward "go". Step through the loop, then take the dopamine away and watch the brake win.
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Healthy
Parkinson's
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Where DBS acts
Where drugs act
The dopamine reserve: how much is gone before symptoms
Symptoms do not start when the first nigral neuron dies. Loss builds silently for years, and the nerve endings in the striatum go faster than the cell bodies in the midbrain. Scrub through the years around diagnosis. The figures come from post-mortem counts and imaging, and they do not all agree. 58,105,178
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Other estimates at onset
The old "80%" figure
What the box diagram gets right, and where it breaks