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Smoking and Parkinson's disease: a dose-response relationship.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether an inverse dose-response relationship
exists between cigarette smoking and PD among ever-smokers and ex-smokers.

METHODS: Smoking and alcohol consumption were analyzed in 144 PD patients
and 464 control subjects, who were frequency matched for sex, race, and age
(+/-5 years), in a population-based case-control study of men and women >
or =50 years old in the Henry Ford Health System.

RESULTS: With never-smokers as the reference category, there was an inverse
association between current light smokers (>0 to 30 pack-years) and PD
patients (odds ratio [OR], 0.59; 95% CI, 0.23 to 1.53), and a stronger
inverse association of PD with current heavy smokers (>30 pack-years; OR,
0.08; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.62).

When former >30-pack-year smokers were stratified by the interval since
quitting, there was an inverse association between those who stopped >20
years ago and PD (OR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.42 to 1.75), and a greater inverse
relationship with those who stopped 1 to 20 years ago (OR, 0.37; 95% CI,
0.19 to 0.72).

Alcohol consumption had no independent, significant association with PD,
but heavy drinking (>10 drink-years) had a greater effect than
light-moderate drinking in reducing but not eliminating the inverse
association between smoking and PD.

CONCLUSIONS: The inverse dose-response relationship between PD and smoking
and its cessation is unlikely to be due to bias or confounding, as
discussed, providing indirect evidence that smoking is biologically
protective.


Neurology 1999 Jan 1;52(1):115-9
Gorell JM, Rybicki BA, Johnson CC, Peterson EL
Department of Neurology, Henry Ford Health System,
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center
in Molecular and Cellular Toxicology with Human Applications,
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA.

PMID: 9921857, UI: 99118830
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed>

janet paterson
52 now / 41 dx / 37 onset
snail-mail: PO Box 171  Almonte  Ontario  K0A 1A0  Canada
website: a new voice <http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/6263/>
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