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Is it Parkinson’s disease, and if not, what is it?

¹ Clinical Lecturer in Neurology
² Clinical Senior Lecturer in Neurology, Department of Medicine & Therapeutics, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr C Counsell, Department of Medicine & Therapeutics, University of Aberdeen, Polwarth Building, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, UK;
carl.counsell@abdn.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Making the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common clinical situation faced by neurologists, geriatricians, and general physicians. In the UK, about 30 to 40 patients are diagnosed with PD every day.¹ However, the diagnosis is not always easy. The diagnostic reference standard for idiopathic PD is still histopathology, based on the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, with Lewy bodies in the surviving neurons (fig 1).² But clearly any reference standard that requires postmortem examination is not very helpful to a clinician faced with a living patient. Unfortunately, there is no antemortem equivalent of the Lewy body.

View larger version (49K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1 Lewy body (arrow): haematoxylin & eosin stain, original objective magnification x40 (courtesy of Dr James MacKenzie).