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Parkinson 's Disease Is A Motor System Disorder Essay

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About one million Americans and four million people worldwide suffer from Parkinson’s disease. The number of individual’s with Parkinson’s increases by at least sixty thousand per year in America. Although the Parkinson’s disease has been around for thousand of years, it was not officially recognized until 1817 by a Dr. James Parkinson. Dr. James Parkinson clearly stated in his paper An Essay on the Shaking Palsy symptoms of Parkinson’s that are still recognized today as markers for the disease. Even though he wrote that paper in 1817, it was not until 1861 that the medical community began to collectively look into this debilitating disease.

What is the Parkinson’s disease? Parkinson’s disease is a motor system disorder. (5) The human motor system is an incredibly complex functional morphology that encompasses neural elements, muscular elements, bony elements, joints, and sensory elements. (4) This disease is brought upon from insufficient production of dopamine in the body/brain. The insufficient production of dopamine is caused by the death of cells in the substania nigra. The exact cause of for what is causing the cells in the substania nigra to die is remains to be unknown. What is understood is that the cell death in the substantia nigra involves the build up of lewy bodies, a type of abnormal protein. (10) The progression of the disease varies person to person, but symptoms tend to develop gradually. Typical symptoms consist of tremors, trembling hands, arms legs,

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