Barrie is 62 years old, the average age of diagnosis for Parkinson's disease. Let's contrast what he might expect with the experience of a 30-year-old who lives with PD. Ben Petrick is now battling Parkinson's disease instead of playing professional baseball. Because he is "young-onset" he can assume some different expectations about his future than Barrie can.
Some general rules of thumb for predicting the course of Parkinson's disease include the following:
- Older patients tend to decline faster than younger patients. Petrick's age may mean that he lives for more than 40 years before he is completely bed-ridden, while Barrie is more likely to have 15 to 20 years before he reaches that level of decline.
- People who have trouble balancing and walking tend to decline faster. Unfortunately, Barrie noticed walking challenges early on. Petrick mentions trouble walking, but he has been diagnosed for some time now, so it is hard to tell if this means anything.
- Patients with rigidity and hypokinesia as their first symptoms tend to reach disability and later stages of Parkinson's disease faster than average.
- People who notice tremor alone as their first symptom tend not to decline as quickly as other people living with Parkinson's disease. They also tend to respond to levodopa over a longer period of time. As the disease progresses, people who notice tremor as the dominant feature of Parkinson's disease also tend to decline at a slower pace.
- People who do not respond well to levodopa therapy deteriorate more rapidly than others. Luckily, Petrick is responding well to his medications, and we suspect that levodopa is one of them. Barrie is so newely diagnosed that he may be taking a dopamine agonist.
- Having another health condition along with Parkinson's disease often leads to faster degeneration.
- Males tend to decline a little faster than females.
- People who develop dementia tend to decline faster than those who do not.
- People who developed Parkinson's disease as a consequence of a Parkin gene mutation may experience accelerated progression of Parkinson's disease.
We hope this information on your age and classification of Parkinson's disease gives you some ideas about what you may confront as you look to the years ahead. We also hope this information helps you refine your strategy and gives you more happy hours, days, and years.
