Objective: To study epidemiological factors contributing to the incidence of Parkinson’s disease at a tertiary care hospital in North India.

Background: Pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease implicates both genetic and environmental factors. Role of environmental factors is unclear in studies implicating a myriad of factors with inconsistency.

Method: 108 Patients in a Parkinson’s disease registry at a tertiary care hospital in North India were evaluated against a group of 91 controls. Only male patients and controls selected. Patients diagnosed using UKPDSBB and controls selected randomly . The various chosen parameters like occupation, rural/urban residence, smoking history [table1] were evaluated for level of significance. However, one of the authors noticed that there was a disproportionate number of patients with facial hair in the Parkinson’s group and this parameter was further evaluated.

Results: Vegetarian diet, manual/agricultural occupation, rural residence and presence of facial hair were statistically significant risk factors for Parkinson’s disease[table2]. Smoking was not found to be a risk factor.

Conclusion: This epidemiologic study revealed unconventional risk factors. This could have been because of a small sample size of case and control groups and larger studies may balance the variables. However we found it interesting that both the Amish and the Sikhs religious groups which mandate facial hair have a higher incidence of Parkinson’s disease. This could also be because of a taboo on smoking in both the groups. People with facial hair have a higher bacterial and dust load than clean shaven do and an emerging school of thought advocates that Parkinson’s begins in the enteric nervous system before moving upwards in a caudo-cephalic manner to involve the brain. Whether the “agent/protein” causing this is exogenous that enters via the nose remains highly speculative. Pending our unlikely findings to be borne out or annulled by other studies , we can speculate that facial hair entraps the “agent/protein” which is then subsequently inhaled leading to higher incidence of Parkinson’s in those with facial hair. However this far-fetched hypotheses has limitations like no increase in Parkinson’s incidence in spouses of those with facial hair who would also be over exposed to the “agent/protein”. Larger studies can shed more light on this interesting finding which may just turn out to be a statistical anomaly.

References: 1 Olanow CW, Prusiner SB. Is Parkinson’s disease a prion disorder?. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2009 Aug 4;106

« Back to 2019 International Congress

MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/study-of-epidemiological-risk-factors-in-a-male-only-north-indian-parkinsons-cohort/