Study: Parkinson's Has Male Bias
By Nicolle Charbonneau - HealthScout Reporter
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/hsn/20001114/hl/study_parkinson_s_has_male_bias_1.html
Nov. 13, 2000 (HealthScout) -- Men are twice as likely as women to
develop Parkinson's disease, Italian researchers suggest.
However, an American expert says while the degenerative nerve condition
is more common in men, the difference is not nearly as great as the
Italian researchers report in the latest issue of the journal Neurology.
Parkinson's disease occurs when cells that produce the messenger
chemical dopamine in a brain area, called the substantia nigra, die or
become impaired. Without dopamine, nerve cells fire out of control,
leaving patients
unable to control their movements.
The progressive disease affects nearly 1.5 million Americans, including
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, evangelist Billy Graham and actor
Michael J. Fox. The four main symptoms of Parkinson's are trembling in
the
hands, arms, legs, jaw and face; stiffness of the limbs and trunk;
slowness of movement and impaired balance and coordination. The symptoms
can lead to difficulty walking, talking or completing other simple
tasks. While
the disease is not fatal, and drug therapies and surgery can help some
patients, it has no known cure.
The latest study followed a group of 4,341 men and women, ages 65 to 84,
who were part of the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Participants
were first contacted between 1992 and 1993 and again three years later.
In those three years, 29 men developed Parkinson's disease, compared
with 13 women. Another 14 men and 12 women developed Parkinson's-like
symptoms resulting from other neurological causes, such as dementia,
drugs or stroke.
After adjusting for age, lead author Dr. Marzia Baldereschi and her
colleagues calculated that men were 2.13 times more likely to develop
Parkinson's disease than women.
"I think this male predominance is very important," says Baldereschi, a
researcher at the Italian National Research Council in Florence, Italy.
While her team has several theories to explain the finding, Baldereschi
says
it's too early to draw reliable conclusions. "There is probably
something related to lifestyle, such as occupational exposures," like
pesticides, she says.
"It could be also something genetic that could increase the
susceptibility to other environmental risk factors to Parkinson's
disease," says Baldereschi. "I think that gene-environment interaction
is the main avenue for research in this field."
One common theory suggests that higher estrogen levels in women may
somehow protect against nerve decay. "This might partially explain while
males are at a greater risk of neurodegenerative diseases, but this is
true only
for Parkinson's disease," says Baldereschi, pointing out that
Alzheimer's disease is more common in women.
But the Italian findings raised the eyebrows of at least one Parkinson's
expert who says other studies have found that the real-world breakdown
of Parkinson's patients is closer to 55 percent men and 45 percent
women.
"Even though Parkinson's is a disease of the elderly, this male-female
ratio holds," says Dr. Abraham Lieberman, medical director of the
National Parkinson Foundation in Miami, Fla.
"It's not a striking difference, but to say that there's twice the risk
-- that's stretching things statistically, because there certainly
aren't twice as many men as women with Parkinson's disease," says
Lieberman.
The jury is still out on whether women are somehow more protected
against this disease. But if you think you may be susceptible because of
heredity or injury, s e your doctor as soon as possible.
To find out more about Parkinson's disease, visit these Web pages from
the National Parkinson's Foundation, the Parkinson's Disease Foundation,
The Parkinson's Institute or the National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke.
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