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Parkinson’s can affect any one at any age – recently we discovered that three people in a room had Parkinson’s and their collective age was 78, but average age was 29.
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One in every 20 diagnosed is under the age of 40.
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Around 120,000 people in the UK have Parkinson’s
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That’s one in every 500, with 10,000 people a year being diagnosed
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7,000,000 people are touched by Parkinson’s in the UK
Parkinson's is a degenerative neurological condition that dramatically affects movement, so every day actions become increasingly difficult and eventually impossible. The disease is currently said to be incurable, an opinion The Cure Parkinson's Trust is determined to challenge.
Parkinson's disease develops when dopamine producing cells in the brain die. Dopamine is a chemical which sends messages in the brain to co-ordinate movement. Everyone with Parkinson's develops their own symptoms, which means there can be no one approach to treating the disease.
Parkinson's is still often treated with Levadopa (or variants of this) which was first introduced as a treatment in the 1960s.