Progressive Supranuclear Palsy is a Parkinson mimic. To look alike, either in a typical Parkinson or a Parkinson Plus syndrome. So with PSP or Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, patients can look like Parkinson’s disease. Their walking can be slow, there can be shuffling, but very early on in the piece things change. Their balance becomes severely affected and they’ll often start falling, and they look a bit stiff. They often fall backwards and can look as though they’re a tree being felled.
Clinically, when patients come in to see someone like myself, the thing that gives away Progressive Supranuclear Palsy is abnormal eye movements, where the eyes may be moving slower and with a restricted range to what we would expect of normal aging. And that helps us to be more definitive about making the diagnosis of PSP. There are also other clinical features in PSP where memory can be affected and also problems where the hand might be clumsy, as are part of other syndromes that you can hear about elsewhere on this website.