Essential tremor is often confused with which disease?

• A. Alzheimer's disease
• B. Parkinson's disease
• C. Epilepsy
• D. Migraine

Answer: (B)

Tremor patterns help distinguish movement disorders, and essential tremor is often mistaken for Parkinson's disease because both involve tremor. The key difference is when the tremor appears. Essential tremor is mainly an action or postural tremor—most noticeable when you use your hands or hold a position, and it can be bilateral. Parkinson's disease, on the other hand, typically features a resting tremor that appears when the limbs are relaxed and not in use, and it’s usually accompanied by other signs like slowness of movement (bradykinesia) and stiffness. Because a patient may first present with tremor alone, clinicians might initially think of Parkinson's, especially since Parkinson's is a common cause of tremor in older adults. The other listed conditions involve different primary symptoms—cognition in Alzheimer's, seizures in epilepsy, and headaches in migraine—so they don’t fit the primary tremor picture as Parkinson's does.