Every morning, Marie Dupin slips into the skin of a personality, an event, a place or a fact at the heart of the news.
Parkinson’s disease affects 270,000 people in France, which places it in second place among neurodegenerative pathologies, just behind Alzheimer’s. On the occasion, Tuesday April 11, of the world day against the disease of Parkinson, it should be underlined that it touches an increasingly young public.
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Among Parkinson’s patients in 2023, 20% are under 60 years old. Those who suffer from this neurodegenerative pathology are also three times more numerous than 20 years ago. Every year, 25,000 French people learn that they have Parkinson’s disease. How to explain it?
First, Parkinson’s disease has been recognized as an occupational disease for farmers exposed to pesticides. Inserm researchers have thus estimated that exposed farmers had a risk almost twice as high to develop the disease than those who did not use pesticides.
The latter do not only attack the organism of the farmers. Researchers have also put forward possible links between the exposure of neighbors of agricultural land and this incurable disease which is therefore developing exponentially in France.
No medicine really treats the disease
The medications available only treat the symptoms for a fixed period of time, what Parkinson’s patients call the “honeymoon” period. Indeed, the treatments used no longer work after a few years. Worse, they can cause side effects, including addictions.
It is therefore a double fight for the patients and for those who accompany them against this evil which almost always starts in the same way. First a hand or an arm that is barely shaking. The movements are a little slower. The changes are very slight at first, but the disease is already well established.
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Because tremors are only the tip of the iceberg. Parkinson’s patients suffer from very significant cognitive disorders that confine them. Their body becomes a prison. At the end of life, they can no longer move around, communicate with their loved ones who try to make their voices heard. Patients who have been asking the State for years to finally put in place a plan to fight against the neurodegenerative pathology that is Parkinson’s disease.