When the British surgeon James Parkinson first described ‘shaking palsy’ in 1817, he did so by looking at the way patients’ bodies moved.
Two centuries on, most specialists seeking to diagnose Parkinson’s disease still do the same. They rely on physical symptoms to tell them what’s happening in people’s brains: operating largely in the dark.
This lack of understanding contributes hugely to the growing health burden of Parkinson’s, with over 10 million people living with the disease and incidence doubling every 25 years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
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