Wait, there is more….

Note that the Lethargica cases had the step virus as a trigger event. This is scary because that virus is ubiquitous. The very common streptococcus virus that causes teachers and students to miss school that appears so readily is nearly as common as the cold. What researchers and doctors are just beginning to discover is that the brain trauma results in Movement and Psychiatric Disorders in many children. The most common outcome is Chorea accompanied by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is clinically indistinguishable from the Idiopathic forms; the only difference is that with the viral induced version, your child changes over night. It is highly treatable and reversible if caught early on, yet we do not know how this changes the brain or makes it more vulnerable to adult onset neurological problems. Oh, the alarming part is that the basal ganglia is again the target; children who experience this have anti basal ganglia antibodies. There is also now a recorded case of a young man at 15 presenting with a sudden, severe Parkinsonism that emerged after a bout with strep throat. He deteriorated rapidly over the course of a few days, yet he fully recovered because doctors knew to treat him with a course of steroids. There are several other sporadic non-related cases of Autoimmune Parkinsonism as secondary to Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Hypothalamic Disorders; these too reversed with steroid therapy. What is key is that Parksonism manifested at some point as a sidekick to a primary auto immune disorder.

What these cases all share in common besides a viral component is that they clearly show that Parkinson's can be readily explained, and in some cases readily treated with steroids. It is not necessarily a mysterious, dark, inexplicable sporadic disease that has its own unique etiology and outcome. To me it proves that what we call Parkinson's Disease may in many cases really be an autoimmune reaction to brain trauma; it is a messenger. I think that it seems to mark a crossroads of sorts for us to either heal and recover from a brain trauma or to end up somewhere on a spectrum of neurodegenerative disease. Haven't many of us expressed this very same thing here? How it seemed PD was our system's way of reacting to chronic stress and suppressed negative emotion; that the symptoms were telling us, hey, slow it down, stop what you are doing. It may start as an auto-immune reaction to infection, but how it plays out is not entirely up to us. Sure we can push it toward the pathogenic with stress, but I would say that genetics and other factors (like whether this is the first brain insult) make a huge difference.

In the streptococcus cases experienced by children; while Chorea is the most common movement disorder, others end up with Parkinsonsim, Dystonia, Tics, Blephospasm. In other words, a full range of disorders featuring he basal ganglia, not surprisingly the area of the brain associated with all these things and the one that results in antibodies. I mention this because I ran across an author who said that something is definitely auto-immune in origin if it is expressed in a spectrum. That means the person with anti basal antibodies can experience the full range of movement disorders (in varying degrees) connected with that center of the brain. Researchers are now noting that Essential Tremor and tremor-dominant PD are actually not separate conditions, but a spectrum. Could this be why so many of us experience dystonia? We may not be experiencing dystonia secondary to our condition, but actual dopa-responsive dystonia. This idea of auto-immune spectrum disorder also explains our wide variation in tremor, what we now call PD subtypes may instead be spectrum disorder; think of all our other "atypical" symptoms that no one can explain? Think of how many of us present with atypical tremor not fitting either the ET or PD mold? I feel this only further supports that basal ganglia disorders may in large part be auto-immune in origin because they seem to show up the most as secondary symptoms to other primary infections (pyramidal) damaging the brain. From what I have read auto-immune disorders tend to stick together. This for me explains why Parkinsonism shows up so regularly as a reaction to or along with many other immune based illnesses. This is why it shows in such a cross section of people from children to elderly only then later to become disease when it becomes chronic. I have never bought that PD is a disease of aging. In the literature teenagers are experiencing what to anyone would like IPD. Again, it shows how Parkinson's is a unique cluster of symptoms in reaction to brain insult which can then turn pathologic and chronic becoming a disease.

I think this is important enough to analyze and explore in great detail because it seems to answer a lot of things that don't make sense, maybe it does so too easily. If I can sit down and start with a rather simplistic hypothesis that there is no real idiopathic PD and find that several scientists are essentially saying the same thing and offering proof in the form of case studies, anti-bodies, and other substantiating research, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark , as the saying goes.

Let's not forget that h. pylori, a bacterial infection in the intestines, is not only responsible for peptic ulcers but serves to clear up most of the symptoms of people who supposedly have idiopathic PD and in some cases clear it completely. In addition, the pylori can be linked to changing sub-types in PD. Well, here is more evidence that researchers should be making use of post haste, but that again goes largely ignored.

Am I way off base here? Really over the top? Am I missing some key research that negates what I have tied together? Does anyone know if PDhas systematically been analyzed officially as an auto-immune disorder based on the standard 4 point criteria? If not, then why, it has not been done at this point nearly 100 years after the first strong correlation between influenza and PD?

Thanks for indulging me in this over the top long post.

Laura