Objective: To study the potential association between Parkinson’s disease prevalence and pesticide consumption in Colombia between 2009 and 2018.
Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease in the Southern hemisphere, whose hereditary and environmental correlates are yet to be fully understood. Among the environmental factors, pesticide exposure has been proposed as one of the contributors to the increasing prevalence of the disease. Colombia is a Latin American country with a high pesticide consumption, but the temporo-spatial relationship between PD and pesticide exposure remains to be studied.
Method: This is an ecological study of PD prevalence in Colombia calculated from health administrative records. According to previous literature, we estimated pesticide exposure by municipality and then analyzed its temporally lagged association with PD prevalence through pseudo-panel regressions. We also explored the spatial association between both variables by means of weighted geographical regressions and identified spatiotemporal clusters.
Results: Over the study period, relative consumption of pesticides increased from 1.04 Kg/ha to 1.74 Kg/ha (p=0.012), while PD became more prevalent, particularly since 2016 (p=0.001). After the multivariate adjustment, there was a significant association between PD prevalence and time-lagged pesticide consumption in both pseudo-panel and weighted geographical regressions (p<0.05). Stratified analysis by age and sex revealed a spatial correlation with PD prevalence in men and women aged 55 years and older (p=0.001). Between 2009 and 2018, there were overlapping significant clusters of PD prevalence and pesticide consumption in municipalities in the departments of Bolivar, Cundinamarca, Tolima, Valle del Cauca and Nariño.
Conclusion: To our knowledge, these results confirm, for the first time, the association between pesticide exposure and PD prevalence in Colombia at the ecological level. Implementing temporo-spatial analyses increase the robustness of results and pave the way for future investigations aimed at determining which pesticides demonstrate the highest association with PD.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
G. Pinilla-Monsalve, E. Manrique-Hernández, D. Forero-Munoz, A. Idrovo. High Pesticide Exposure and Parkinson’s Disease: An Ecological Study in Colombia [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2025; 40 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/high-pesticide-exposure-and-parkinsons-disease-an-ecological-study-in-colombia/. Accessed October 5, 2025.« Back to 2025 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/high-pesticide-exposure-and-parkinsons-disease-an-ecological-study-in-colombia/