More evidence ties diabetes to Parkinson’s risk
People with diabetes may have a heightened risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, especially at a relatively young age, a new study finds.
Published in the journal Diabetes Care, the study adds to recent research linking diabetes to Parkinson’s disease.
But neither this report nor the earlier ones prove that diabetes, itself, raises a person’s risk of Parkinson’s – a disorder in which movement-regulating brain cells gradually become disabled or die.
Instead, researchers suspect that it’s more likely diabetes and Parkinson’s share some common underlying causes.
The new study looked at health insurance claims from more than one million Taiwanese adults – including a little over 600,000 with diabetes.
Researchers found that over nine years, people with diabetes were more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. They were diagnosed at a rate of 3.6 cases per 10,000 people each year, versus 2.1 per 10,000 among people without diabetes.
Type 2 Diabetes Raises the Risk of Parkinsons Disease
A shocking discovery is just coming out linking Type 2 Diabetes to Parkinson’s Disease. There are nearly 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, according to the National Parkinsons Foundation, which is a disease affecting brain cells and neurons causing reduced levels of dopamine. The lowered levels of dopamine cause such side effects as tremors, paralysis and death.
“Scottie” also suffered from Type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease during Star Trek
Overall, after adjusting for other possible risk factors for Parkinson’s disease, men and women with type 2 diabetes were 83 percent more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those without it.
Although common lifestyle factors may play a role, researchers say more study is needed to fully understand the relationship between diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers have found that a patient with Type 2 Diabetes is 83% more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease later in life than someone without Type 2 Diabetes. 83%… that is shocking to me.
People who had type 2 diabetes at the start of the study were much more likely to be later diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
When the researchers factored in age, sex and certain other health conditions, they found that diabetes was still linked to an increased risk of Parkinson’s – especially at a relatively young age.
Among women in their 40s and 50s, those with diabetes had twice the risk of Parkinson’s that diabetes-free women did.
The same was true among men in their 20s and 30s, though that was based on only a handful of Parkinson’s cases: there were four cases among young men with diabetes, and two among those without diabetes.
Exactly what it all means is unclear, according to Drs. Yu Sun and Chung-Yi Li, who led the study.
But on average, people develop Parkinson’s diagnosis around age 60, the researchers noted in an email to Reuters Health.
“Our findings tend to suggest a relationship between diabetes and early-onset Parkinson’s disease,” said Sun and Li, who are based at En Chu Kong Hospital and National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.
That’s in line with a study of Danish adults published last year, the researchers noted.
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Still, it’s impossible to say for sure that diabetes, itself, is to blame.
One reason is that the current study had limited information, according to Sun and Li.
“Because our study was based on claims data,” they said, “it lacks information on some of the known risk factors for Parkinson’s disease, such as pesticide exposure.”
Researchers have speculated on the potential reasons for the diabetes-Parkinson’s link, and they suspect there might be certain biological mechanisms that contribute to both conditions.
One possibility is chronic, low-level inflammation throughout the body, which is suspected of contributing to a number of chronic diseases by damaging cells. There might also be a common genetic susceptibility to both diabetes and Parkinson’s.
Finnish researchers have found that people with type 2 diabetes were more than 80% more likely to be later diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease than others.
It’s the first major prospective study to suggest that diabetes may be a risk factor of Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disease that causes muscle rigidity and tremors.
Researchers say the exact nature of the relationship between diabetes and Parkinson’s disease is unclear, but several lifestyle factors may be associated with both disorders, such as being overweight, cigarette smoking, and lack of physical activity.
“It could be hypothesized that diabetes might increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease partly through excess body weight,” writes researcher Gang Hu, MD, PhD, of the National Public Health Institute in Finland, and colleagues in Diabetes Care.
Diabetes Boosts Parkinson’s Risk
In the study, researchers followed a group of more than 50,000 men and women in Finland over a period of 18 years. During that time, 324 men and 309 women developed Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers found people who had type 2 diabetes at the start of the study were much more likely to be later diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Overall, after adjusting for other possible risk factors for Parkinson’s disease, men and women with type 2 diabetes were 83% more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those without it.
Although common lifestyle factors may play a role, researchers say more study is needed to fully understand the relationship between diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.
But even if people with diabetes have a relatively elevated risk of Parkinson’s, it’s still a low risk, Sun and Li pointed out.
In this study, there were fewer than four cases per 10,000 diabetic adults each year.
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A recent U.S. study found a similar pattern: Of 21,600 older adults with diabetes, 0.8 percent were diagnosed with Parkinson’s over 15 years. That compared with 0.5 percent of people who were diabetes-free at the study’s start.
The researchers on that study said that people with diabetes should simply continue to do the things already recommended for their overall health – like eating a well-balanced diet and getting regular exercise.
Sun and Li agreed with that advice. “There is no need for patients with diabetes to worry too much about the development of Parkinson’s disease,” they said.
More studies are needed, the researchers said, to understand why diabetes is related to a higher Parkinson’s risk – and what, if anything, can be done about it.
Diabetes arises when the body can no longer properly use the blood-sugar-regulating hormone insulin. Parkinson’s occurs when movement-regulating cells in the brain die off or become disabled, leading to symptoms like tremors, rigidity in the joints, slowed movement and balance problems.
Researchers say it’s possible that something about diabetes – like a problem regulating insulin – might somehow contribute to Parkinson’s. But that remains unproven.
SOURCE: Diabetes Care, online March 19, 2012
Risk of Parkinson Disease Onset in Patients With Diabetes
A 9-year population-based cohort study with age and sex stratifications
Yu Sun, MD, PHD,
Ya-Hui Chang, MSC,
Hua-Fen Chen, MD, MSC,
Ying-Hwa Su, PHD,
Hui-Fang Su, PHD and
Chung-Yi Li, PHD
CONCLUSIONS Diabetes is associated with an increased risk of PD onset in a Chinese population, and the relation is stronger in women and younger patients.