The Essential Tremors: A Family of Neurodegenerative Disorders?

Essential tremor (ET) is the most common pathological tremor in humans. The traditional view of ET, as a mono-symptomatic condition, is being replaced by an appreciation of the spectrum of clinical features, with both motor and non-motor elements. These features are not distributed homogeneously across patients. In addition, post-mortem studies are now demonstrating distinct structural changes in ET. There is growing evidence that ET may be a family of diseases rather than a single entity. Further, this aging-associated, progressive disorder is associated with neuronal loss and postmortem changes that occur in traditional neurodegenerative disorders.