Parkinson's Disease Linked to Pesticide Exposure

In a recent publication researchers reported that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) were more likely to have had a direct exposure to pesticides than their unaffected family members.

Investigators at Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC, USA) and the University of Miami (FL, USA) conducted telephone interviews with 319 Parkinson's patients and with 296 of their relatives and other control subjects. They were seeking evidence of connections between direct pesticide application, well-water consumption, and farming occupations or residences with PD while controlling age-at-examination, sex, cigarette smoking, and caffeine consumption.

They reported in the March 28, 2008, edition of the online open access journal BMC Neurology that individuals with PD were significantly more likely to report direct pesticide application than their unaffected relatives do. When classifying pesticides by functional type, both insecticides and herbicides were found to significantly increase risk of PD. Two specific insecticide classes, organochlorines and organophosphorus compounds, were significantly associated with PD. Consuming well water, living or working on a farm were not associated with PD.

"Previous studies have shown that individuals with Parkinson's disease are over twice as likely to report being exposed to pesticides as unaffected individuals,” said lead author Dr. Dana Hancock, a researcher in the program in genetics and genomics at Duke University, "but few studies have looked at this association in people from the same family or have assessed associations between specific classes of pesticides and Parkinson's disease. Biological evidence is presently insufficient to conclude that pesticide exposure causes PD. Further investigation of these specific pesticides and others may lead to identification of pertinent biological pathways influencing PD development.”


Related Links:
Duke University Medical Center
University of Miami