Progressive supranuclear palsy
What is Progressive Supranuclear Palsy?
AProgressive Supranuclear Palsy or PSP is a rare disease, which leads to symptoms of stiffness, slowness of movement, early falls, and cognitive impairment.
The disease is part of the movement disorder group of diseases, coursing with a form ofparkinsonism.
parkinsonismis the set of symptoms characterized by:
Bradykinesia (slowness of movement), associated with muscle rigidity and/or tremor.
When we talk about Parkinson's disease, we are talking about a disease, which also has parkinsonism.
In PSP, in addition to parkinsonism, there are other characteristics that help to differentiate it from Parkinson's disease, such as early falls. The patient tends to fall for no reason, repeatedly. Difficulty looking, with a more frozen look down or up, are also common in PSP and do not occur in Parkinson's disease.
A PSP It is rare and therefore very difficult to diagnose. It is almost always diagnosed as "difficult to treat" Parkinson's disease.
How is PSP diagnosed?
PSP is diagnosed primarily through thepresence of symptomsdescribed above, or part of them, associated with characteristic changes in the cranial (or brain) MRI.
On skull MRI, only global atrophy may be found, but not uncommonly, regional atrophy of the midbrain is observed, leading to specific signs such as the "hummingbird sign" (or penguin sign).