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The parkinson’s It is a movement disorder that manifests itself when the neurons responsible for producing dopamine slowly die. The lack of this substance causes the control of movement to be altered, which causes typical motor symptoms, such as tremor at rest or rigidity. However, there are other symptoms, such as sleep or smell disorders, constipation, fatigue, which may even appear before problems with movement. Now new pioneering research from Queen Mary University of London, whose results are published in the journal JAMA Neurology, points to two new early warning signsa: hearing loss and epilepsy.
The researchers used the electronic primary care records of more than a million people living in East London between 1990 and 2018 to explore early symptoms and risk factors for Parkinson’s.
Its regarding first UK study of this disease in such a diverse populationas this area of the capital has a high proportion of different ethnic groups and low-income households.
Their findings include that known symptoms associated with Parkinson’s, including tremors and memory problems, may appear up to 15 years before diagnosis, respectively. They also discovered two new early features of this neurodegenerative disease: epilepsy and hearing loss, and were able to replicate these findings using additional data from the UK Biobank.
Although early signs of Parkinson’s disease have been described previously, to date these studies have largely focused on affluent white populations, with patients from minority ethnic groups and those living in rural areas underrepresented. with few resources. The new research provides further evidence using data from such a diverse urban population for the first time.
In East London, conditions like hypertension and the type 2 diabetes were associated with higher odds of developing Parkinson’s. The researchers also observed a stronger association between memory complaints within this population.
“This is the first study to focus on the pre-diagnosis phase of Parkinson’s disease in such a diverse population with high socioeconomic deprivation but universal access to healthcare. People from minority ethnic groups and disadvantaged areas have been largely underrepresented in Parkinson’s research until now, but to enable us to get a full picture of the condition, we need to ensure that the research is inclusive and represents all those affected.” explains the lead author of the study, Dr. Cristina Simonet, a neurologist and doctoral student at Queen Mary University of London.
While previous research has hinted that epilepsy is more common in Parkinson’s patients than in the general population, more research is now needed to fully understand the relationship. For the researcher, it is important that primary care doctors are aware of these links and understand how early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease can appear, so that patients can get an early diagnosis and doctors can act early to help. to control the condition.
“This study confirms that many of the symptoms and early features of Parkinson’s can occur long before diagnosis. Through our ongoing PREDICT-PD research, we hope to identify people at high risk for Parkinson’s even before overt symptoms appear, which means we might do more than just improve patients’ quality of life, and maybe be able to slow down or cure parkinson in the futuror,” says Dr. Alastair Noyce, associate professor of neurology and neuroepidemiology at Queen Mary University of London, who is also an author of the new research.
