July 1, 2024 – Being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder later in life can increase your risk of developing Parkinson’s disease as much as twice as much.
Parkinson's disease is a disorder of the nervous system that usually begins slowly with a light tremor but can progress to problems with movement, speech and balance. There is not any cure, but medications will help manage symptoms.
The latest findings from researchers in London were limited to people diagnosed with anxiety from the age of fifty, because the researchers didn't look back at previous anxiety diagnoses in life. The typical time span between a brand new anxiety diagnosis and a Parkinson's diagnosis was just below 5 years, based on the study published last week in British Journal of General Medicine.
The researchers analyzed the health records of people that attended primary care clinics within the United Kingdom from 2008 to 2018 and were all aged 50 or older. People were considered to have newly diagnosed anxiety if their health records didn't list an anxiety disorder for a full 12 months before a physician documented an anxiety disorder. The evaluation included health data from greater than 870,000 individuals who had no recorded anxiety disorder through the study period, in addition to data from nearly 110,000 individuals who were newly diagnosed with anxiety.
Anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias, and separation anxiety. Although anxiety disorders are frequently diagnosed earlier in life, the researchers noted that previous studies have shown that older individuals with anxiety often even have problems with memory and considering skills.
The increased risk of Parkinson's disease in older people recently diagnosed with an anxiety disorder continued even when researchers added aspects corresponding to age, lifestyle and the presence of one other mental illness to their evaluation.
The latest evaluation also matched previously known risk aspects for Parkinson's disease, corresponding to being male or affected by depression, fatigue, difficulty considering, low blood pressure, tremors, rigidity, balance problems, constipation or sleep disorders corresponding to sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome and insomnia.
“By understanding that anxiety and the characteristics mentioned are associated with a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease when you are older than 50, we hope that we can detect the disease earlier and help patients get the treatment they need,” said researcher Juan Bazo Alvarez, PhD, of University College London, in a Press release.
An estimated 1 million people within the United States live with Parkinson's, and 90,000 individuals are diagnosed every year, based on the Parkinson Foundation. Most cases are diagnosed when individuals are 50 years or older, but 4% of diagnoses are made in people under 50. Men are 1.5 times more prone to be diagnosed with this disease than women.
Parkinson's disease is brought on by the breakdown or death of nerve cells within the brain called neurons that produce the chemical dopamine. A scarcity of dopamine in Parkinson's patients results in irregular brain activity. The cause is unknown, but each genes and environmental aspects are thought to play a task.