More and more people worldwide are developing Parkinson’s disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Just a few decades ago data from the Global Burden of Disease study reported about half a million people with Parkinson’s disease, with its characteristic tremor at rest and other movement abnormalities. Johns Hopkins neurologist Liana Rosenthal says now more than twice that number have the condition.           

Rosenthal: In 1990 a little more than 400,000 people globally were diagnosed with Parkinson disease. It's more common in older adults but the overall number was for a little more than 400,000. By the time you get to 2019 though the same global burden of disease study is noting more than 1,000,000 individuals worldwide with Parkinson's disease. It's really grown in every age category.              :29

Rosenthal says the key question is why so many more people are being affected by Parkinson’s disease, or PD, especially at younger ages. She says researchers are hard at work to identify risk factors for PD with an eye toward interruption. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.