Essential tremor not just a tremor (review)

Abstract

Essential tremor is one of the most common movement disorders. The nature of this disease is not fully understood. It was believed that this pathology manifests itself only by tremor, and symptoms such as depression, anxiety and apathy in patients with essential tremor can only be regarded as a reaction to the presence of tremor. Cognitive impairment is a concomitant pathology that can occur in the elderly, which accounts for a more frequent onset of the disease. But is it really so Purpose of the study. To study the literature data to identify the presence in patients with essential tremor of such signs that can be attributed to the group of "non-motor" symptoms. Material and methods. In order to study the literature data, a search was carried out in the Web of Science, PubMed databases. During the search, all articles published since 2000 were examined and the following terms were used in combination with "essential tremor": "non-motor symptoms", "anxiety", "depression", "apathy", "cognitive impairment", "sleep disorders", "hearing impairment", "hyposmia". The main search terms were studies based on the study of patients with essential tremor: meta-analyzes, original studies, retrospective and cohort studies. Results and discussion. It can be unambiguously argued that symptoms such as anxiety, depression, apathy and cognitive, hearing and smell dysfunctions are characterised to the patients with essential tremor. The first three manifestations were attributed to the response to the presence of tremor. And cognitive functions, hearing and smell dysfunctions was considered a concomitant pathology, which occurs quite often in old age, which accounts for a more frequent onset of the disease. But in reality, everything is not so simple. The literature data, which began to appear over the past 20 years, make it clear that the previously mentioned clinical manifestations may well be regarded as "non-motor" symptoms of essential tremor. Conclusion. Nowadays neurologists are increasingly faced with the problem of differential diagnosis of essential tremor. Despite the fact that everything was very simple and clear on the diagnosis of this disease, in recent years more and more data have appeared in favor of the fact that essential tremor is a heterogeneous disease that manifests not only by tremor. But this is also a disease, which, due to its heterogeneity of pathophysiology, can give great variability in the clinical picture. Keywords: essential tremor, nonmotor symptoms, anxiety, depression, cognitive impairnment, dementia.