Half of all adults suffer from drug shortages and live in fear of running out - but experts say there IS a solution By John Naish Published: 10:25, 27 August 2024 | Updated: 10:25, 27 August 2024 e-mail View comments Three years ago Ray Weaver was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease – just weeks after taking early retirement from a career in education. It was a cruel blow. The disease is incurable and caused by the loss of nerve cells in the brain, leading to a drop in levels of a chemical called dopamine.
Dopamine regulates the body’s movements and without enough of it, muscles become rigid, causing frequent ‘freezing’, tremors and bradykinesia – or slow movements. Ray, 59, who lives in Aigburth, Liverpool with his wife Angela, 67, told Good Health: ‘My initial symptoms, which began months before the diagnosis, included pains in my right shoulder, then difficulty walking.’ Yet despite the diagnosis, there was some hope that, with the right medication – in this case a drug called ropinirole (which reduces Parkinson’s symptoms by copying the effects of natural dopamine in the brain) – Ray might still have a reasonable quality of life.
‘Initially it worked nicely,’ he says, ‘although it helped that I am relatively young and did not at the time have problems such as tremors.’ Ray Weaver, 59, lives in Aigburth, Liverpool, with his wife Angela, 67 But over the past six months, Ray’s condition has deteriorated. He has lost mobility and strength and wo.