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 “This is the first evidence that shows an increasing trend of
Parkinson incidence, confirmation is needed,” said Dr. Honglei Chen
of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in
Triangle Park, North Carolina, who wrote an editorial accompanying
the new results.
Parkinson disease takes decades to develop, so it can be difficult
to identify reasons for the trend and a number of factors may play a
role, Chen said.
“However, if the trend is confirmed, one may speculate roles of
environmental or other non-genetic factors,” he told Reuters Health
by email.
Senior author Dr. Walter A. Rocca of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minnesota, and his coauthors studied trends in Parkinson disease and
symptoms like resting tremors, rigidity, impaired reflexes and
slowness of movement in Olmsted County, Minnesota, between 1976 and
2005.
During that time, 906 patients developed symptoms seen in Parkinson
disease (a condition known as parkinsonism) and 464 developed
Parkinson disease. Half of people were over age 73 at onset.
For men, parkinsonism incidence increased from 39 to 56 cases per
100,000 people per year between the 1976-1985 decade and the
1996-2005 decade. Parkinson disease cases also increased from 18 to
30 cases per 100,000 people per year.
The increasing trend was driven by men over age 70. There was no
increasing trend for women over the 30-year period, as reported in
JAMA Neurology.
It’s possible that doctors are just getting better at diagnosing
Parkinson disease as time goes on, Chen said, but that wouldn’t
explain the differing trends by sex.
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“There is a long history and ongoing debate about a paradoxical
finding that smokers are less likely to have Parkinson disease,”
Chen said. He noted that smoking rates declined during the period of
the study.
“Cigarette smoking has numerous adverse health effects, but its
inverse association with Parkinson disease was observed in almost
every epidemiological study,” Chen added.
Nicotine seems to be beneficial for animals in parkinsonism studies,
he said.
“On the other hand, some scientists are still concerned that this
observation was due to non-biological reasons, for example,
individuals at risk for Parkinson disease are less likely to start
smoking early in life, or if they started, they are more likely to
quit,” Chen said.
People need not be concerned about this potential trend until it’s
been confirmed by multiple additional studies, he said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/28JHkCJ JAMA Neurology, online June 20, 2016.
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