Black adults face delays in parkinson’s diagnosis and treatment

There is no blood test or lab test to diagnose Parkinson’s disease, though that could change. For now, doctors rely largely on symptoms when making a diagnosis. “And the common one we’ve

been taught is a tremor,” Branson says. However, an estimated 25 percent of people with Parkinson’s disease, which mostly affects adults 60 and older, don’t have a tremor, she notes. And

it’s possible that some of the other early symptoms of Parkinson’s — dizziness, stiffness and vocal changes, like the speaking problems Huckabee experienced — are easy for both doctors and

patients to overlook or attribute to other age-related conditions. Odinachi Oguh, M.D., a Parkinson’s specialist at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, has

seen this firsthand. She notes that Black adults have higher rates of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and osteoarthritis, and may “blame their symptoms on those other, more historically

common diseases.” One study, published in the _Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology_, found Black adults were more likely than their white counterparts to regard Parkinson’s symptoms as

normal signs of aging. “We have to reintroduce Parkinson’s disease to people,” Branson says, referring to both patients and providers. “It’s not just tremor.” It’s also not something that

just affects older white men, which experts say is a common association. “That’s been the face of Parkinson’s disease for so long,” says Huckabee, who is now a research advocate with the

Parkinson’s Foundation and often speaks to medical students about Parkinson’s disease in the Black community. Some studies have found higher rates of Parkinson’s disease in white adults than

in Black adults. However, Black adults are most likely underrepresented in those studies, experts say. Researchers still don’t have an estimate of how many Black individuals in the U.S. are

living with Parkinson’s disease. PURSUING A PARKINSON’S DIAGNOSIS If you feel like your movements have changed — you’re blinking your eyes a bit too slowly or it’s harder to move your hands

and feet — talk to your doctor about Parkinson’s disease, Branson urges. “It may be the arthritis, but just to have that conversation in the first place, I think, is very important,” she

says. You can also ask your doctor for a referral to see a specialist. It took nearly a decade of inconclusive tests and misdiagnoses before Huckabee was referred to a neurologist, and

research shows he’s not alone. A study published in 2017 in the journal _Neurology_ found that Black patients were 30 percent less likely to see a neurologist than white patients, even after

researchers adjusted for insurance status and other potentially prohibitive factors.