Parkinson's disease redefined.

摘要

Parkinson's disease can be regarded as a generational illness, not only because of its incidence in elderly people, but also because of the changing conceptualisation of the disorder across generations of doctors and researchers. Disease conceptualisation has changed along three epochs since the initial description of the shaking palsy by James Parkinson, and after Charcot's elaboration on the clinical phenotype. For the first generation of investigators, after the introduction of levodopa, clinical and research studies focused on motor symptoms and, subsequently, management of the adverse effects associated with dopamine replacement therapy.