Acute Parkinsonism: A Case Study

Interest Category

Acute parkinsonism, Parkison’s disease

Parkinson’s

It is a progressive nervous system disorder. It is a long-term disease and has no cure. Parkinson’s disease affects an individual’s movements, speech, and writing. Patients with Parkinson’s may have slight tremors in one hand and over the time the symptoms may gradually develop causing stiffness and difficulty with rapid movements. The muscles of a person become weak and their posture changes over a period of time.

What causes Parkinson’s disease?

Low or falling dopamine levels in the brain is the primary cause of Parkinson’s. Dopamines are produced in substantia nigra – a part of the brain. Dopaminergic neurons, dopamine-generating cells in this part of the brain have depleted or died for patients with Parkinson’s. Only 10 percent of Parkinson’s disease is genetic, in most cases the main cause is unknown and it is likely to be due to a combination of environmental and genetic factors.

General symptoms of Parkinson’s disease include tremor, slowed movement or bradykinesia, rigid muscles, impaired balance and posture, loss of automatic movements, speech and writing difficulties.

Acute Parkinsonism

Acute akinesia is the sudden decline in motor performance of the patients, the changes do not restore even after 48 hours of treatment. It is a life-threatening complication of Parkinson’s disease. Acute akinesia is a complication of PD, where the dopaminergic drugs are ineffective and it resembles neuroleptic malignant syndrome. It is prevalent on 15 to 60 percent of the patients on neuroleptics. For many patients, Parkinsonism is aggravated by medication. They do not respond to dopaminergic drugs. This symptom occurs within thirty days of starting neuroleptic drugs.

Case report on acute Parkinsonism

In this case report, Dr. Sreenivas explains the pathology and diagnosis of a patient with acute onset parkinsonism due to Extra Pontine Myelinolysis (EPM). EPM is a form of the osmotic demyelination syndrome.

Read the full case report on Acute Parkinsonism by Dr. Sreenivas

Alcoholism and Parkinson’s disease

Several studies have been conducted on establishing a link between alcoholism and Parkinson’s disease. Some of the studies in animals indicate that heavy alcohol consumption could have dopamine neurotoxic effects. In this case report, the patient is on heavy alcohol consumption.