Another disease which responds to levodopa/carpadopa is a type of dystonia.
Do not take your doctor's word as truth. My insurance covered the the cost of both a F-DOPA scan and a Parkin genetic test.
To correct a statement made earlier in the thread: Lewy bodies do not act as the determination of the existance of Parkinson's disease. If you have Young Onset Parkinson's (YOPD) disease you:
- Do not have Lewy bodies if you have one or more mutations in your Parkin gene. Up to 40% of YOPD who have had their Parkin tested, have been found to have at least 1 mutation.
- The mutations cause a protein called alphasynuclein to over produce and create folds in the mitochondrial system which is the delivery system from the brain, through the blood brain barrier, to the body to deliver dopamine.
- The mitochondrial system eventually begins to clog with the misfolded proteins and less and less dopamine can go through. Eventually, the dopamine clogs up in the basil ganglia and the overabundance of dopamine slows the production of the neurons, which produce dopamine, causing apoptic death of the neurons.
- YOPD with mutations have a very sensitive reaction to the introduction of Sinemet at first. The symptoms for these patient's also shows a slower progression of the disease.
- YOPD is not considered a morbid disease, but dramatically affects the quality of the patients life.
- Dopamine is used not just to initiate movement, it is also part of the fluid behind the eye, (almost 90 %), it is the counter hormone to lactase, and is produced by the body to stop the production of milk in a woman's breast ducts when it comes time to wean her child. Dopamine stops or slows down the growth of tumors and is used in chemotherapy.
- Until research is done on persons with positive mutations of the Parkin gene, to discover what combined with the mutation causes Parkinsonism, Doctors can only treat symptoms and not find cures.
The brain is so complex. Research is only beginning and reseachers are finding out how much they don't know. It is the last frontier of the body to be explored and the hardest to understand. No one deserved this disease. But no one can blame science for not having a cure. Someday they will. Just as many thousands died of plagues, polio, and other diseases in the past before Science found antibiotics, polio vaccine, and immunition shots in our present, we were born before the brain has been understood.
Peace to you,
Vicky