Parkinson’s disease can be diagnosed in the elderly based on the frequent occurrence of nightmares

Researchers have been studying the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease for a long time. This degenerative neurological disorder affects a person’s motor-sensory functions including thinking, mood, and memory. Loss of control over body movements and tremors in the limbs are other signs of the disease. A recent study of older men found that symptoms of Parkinson’s disease can be identified early in life. Frequent nightmares can be an early sign of Parkinson’s disease, experts say. The link between traumatic dreams and this neurological disorder has been around for a long time. This study is the first to investigate this association.

The study involving 3,818 older men showed normal brain function for 12 years. Researchers found that men who frequently had nightmares were twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. The majority of diagnoses for this study occurred during the first five years of the study.

Follow research published year EClinicalMedicine, Older adults can be screened for illness by asking them about the content of their dreams. This can help with early diagnosis. Frequent, Parkinson’s detected only after 60 to 80 percent of dopamine-releasing neurons in the brain stem were damaged.

Neuroscientist Abidemi Otaiku from the University of Birmingham in the UK speak“While an early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease can be really beneficial, there are very few risk indicators and many of these require expensive hospital tests or are very common and nonspecific, such as like diabetes.”

Further research in this direction is needed to determine if the study stands. According to one report, nearly a quarter of Parkinson’s patients reported having frequent nightmares. Parkinson’s patients are also more likely to have rapid eye movement sleep disturbances, which can lead to recurring dreams in sleep. During the course of the study, it was also noted that men had more frequent nightmares than women as a symptom of Parkinson’s disease.

One theory is that the onset of frequent nightmares later in life is an early sign of neurodegeneration in some men.