The Jaina Doctrine of Karma And The Science Of Genetics: Essential Tremor Disease

Tremor, or uncontrollable shaking is a common symptom of neurological disorders such as Parkinson disease, head trauma and stoke. However, many people with tremor have what is called idiopathic or essential tremor may involve other parts of the body, the head and hands are most often effected.

In more than half of the cases, essential tremor is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait, which means that the children of an affected individual also will have a 50% chance of developing the disorder. In 1997, the ETM1 gene (also called FET1) was mapped for chromosome 3 in a study of Icelandic families, while another gene, called ETM2, was mapped to chromosome 2 in a large American families of Czech descent. That two genes for essential tremor have been found on two different chromosomes demonstrate that mutation in a variety of genes may lead to essential tremor.

While the mainstays of treatment are drugs such as proparanolol and premidon, alternative drugs and surgical treatments are also available. Further understanding of the molecular mechanism behind the disease awaits the discovery and cloning of an essential tremor gene.^[41]