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Re: Your Nose and PD
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This was certainly the case with my husband. Some years previous to his
diagnosis of PD, we were surprised to find that he was gradually losing his
sense of smell. We put it down to the fact that he had been a smoker in his
younger days. I found out about the link between PD and a loss of the sense
of smell when I was searching the net for symptoms of PD before we actually
went to the doctor. He had all the initial symptoms including a loss of the
sense of smell.
Moneesha Sharma
On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 6:58 AM, rayilynlee <rayilynlee@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Your nose may warn about onset of Parkinson's
From correspondents in Washington, United States, 11:31 AM IST
An impaired sense of smell occurs in the earliest stages of Parkinson's
disease (PD) and there is mounting evidence that it may precede motor
symptoms by several years, according to a study.
The study, by researchers at the Pacific Health Research Institute in
Hawaii, found that smell impairment can precede the development of PD in
men
by at least four years.
Findings of the study have been published in the latest edition of the
Annals of Neurology, the official journal of the American Neurological
Association.
Led by G. Webster Ross of the VA Pacific Islands Health Care System and
the
Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii, the study included
2,267 men who received an olfactory test and were followed for up to eight
years to find out if they developed PD. During the course of follow-up, 35
men developed the disease.
The results showed that a smell identification deficit could predate the
development of PD by at least four years, although it was not a strong
predictor beyond this time period.
A decreased ability to identify odours was associated with older age,
smoking, more coffee consumption, less frequent bowel movements, lower
cognitive function and excessive daytime sleepiness, but even after
adjusting for these factors, those with poor odour identification had a
five
times greater risk of developing PD.
The pathology of smell impairment in PD is not completely understood, but
nerve loss and the formation of Lewy bodies, abnormal clumps of proteins
inside nerves cells that are thought to be a marker of PD, are known to
take
place in the olfactory structures of patients with the disease.
The authors note that one study involving brain dissection of dead
patients
with neurological disease found that olfactory structures are the earliest
brain regions affected by Lewy degeneration, which supports the idea that
an
impaired sense of smell could be one of the earliest signs of the disease.
(Staff Writer, (c) IANS)
Rayilyn Brown Board Member AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation rbrown@xxxxxxxxx
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