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>Subject: Re: Diabetes/blood sugar abnormalities >> >> Is anyone looking into the odds of a NON-PARKINSON having a family member >> with glucose abnormalities? I don't think the survey results will tell us >> much unless we can make a real comparison. >> >> Also, if the survey is to have any validity, EVERYONE should be encouraged >> to respond, ESPECIALLY if they're writing only to say that there's NO >> glucose abnormality in their family. If people with no relatives that have >> glucose abnormalities fail to respond, the survey's automatically skewed. >> >Hmmm. I have another problem with this survey. My PD husband's sister >has Diabetes. However, she is also morbidly obese which is *why* she has >Diabetes. The other family member on my husband's side who had Diabetes >was also extremely obese. Does this information muddy the waters of our >survey? Are we looking at a control group (spouses of PD folks might fit >that category). >----- >Mary Ann > Regarding Mary Ann's message above, I have been very interested to read the letters about the possible diabetes/blood sugar abnormalities connection with Parkinsons, especially as there was diabetes in my family. (Maternal grandmother). I am a recent newcomer to the list and it may well be that my suggestion has been made before or that the collecting of the data may pose problems, but my suggestion on obtaining data which would conclusively prove, or disprove, the diabetes connection would be as follows. 1. Attempt to obtain from EVERYONE on the list (whether they or have not a family history of diabetes), data as to history of diabetes in the family and work out the percentage of PDers with such a connection. 2. Obtain medical data of percentage of the general public who can be expected to have diabetes in their family. If we obtained a figure of, say, 20% for PDers and 5% for general public there would appear to be a fairly conclusive connection. Difficulties would be: (a) Does data for the general public of the type we require exist? (b) Getting EVERYBODY to reply and collating the data base. (c) Worse still, we have to be careful to ensure that the results are not flawed by an age connection. I am no statistician or researcher but it occurs to me that because PDers are older than the average age of the population they are more likely to have family with diabetes simply because their family will also be older and therefore had more time to develop the diabetes. Stopping and thinking about this I think it is going to be a very difficult problem. One way would be to take say, 600 PDers aged 50-60 and 600 randomly sampled members of the population, also aged 50-60 without PD, to compare the incidence of diabetes in their families. Mary Ann, has a very good point, why not use spouses of PDers as the random sample? This would be the simplest solution of the lot, no blood connection after all, and has the advantage of, generally, falling into the same age group as well. We do however need replies from EVERYONE on the list to avoid the "Gosh, my grandmother had diabetes I'd better write in" responses biasing the results. Ivan Suzman (SashaSherm@ aol.com), full credit to him, appears to have started the ball rolling well on this one and may be well be on the way to collecting the data that is required. We have enough people on the list to collect data which would be statistically significant so let's hear from Ivan and others. Ernie Peters. Age 53. PD 2y5m. Maternal grandmother sugar diabetes. Julia Peters. Age 51. Non PDer and no incidence of diabetes/blood sugar abnormalities in family. Ernie Peters ([log in to unmask])