Men more likely to get Parkinson's Disease

Did you know that more than 10 million people around the world are living with Parkinson’s Disease? The prevalence of the disease is lower in Sub-Saharan Africa than in more industrialised populations. However, statistics show that the incidence of the disease is on the rise in Africa as life expectancy increases across the continent. Only a small percentage of people (4 per cent of all cases) are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease before the age of 50.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurological disorder after Alzheimer’s disease. The disease is named after a British doctor James Parkinson, who first described it in “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy” in 1817. In his essay, Dr Parkinson described a chronic, slowly progressive disease of the nervous system characterised by a combination of tremor, rigidity, and stooped posture.