Depression Linked to Higher Risk of Parkinson's Disease

A group of Taiwanese researchers recently reported in Neurology that depression is an independent risk factor for Parkinson’s disease (PD).

In their analysis of the medical records of 23,180 participants — 4,463 of whom were diagnosed with depression, while 18,533 served as controls — the researchers studied patients’ risk of PD over a 10-year period and used a logistic regression model to identify risk factors in patients who were depressed. They also examined patients’ risk of PD, after excluding those who were diagnosed with the disorder within two or five years following their depression diagnosis.

Over a 10-year follow-up period, 66 patients, or 1.42 percent, had depression and were diagnosed with PD, while another 97 patents, 0.52 percent, who didn’t have depression were diagnosed with the neurological disorder.

After adjusting for age and sex, the authors concluded that patients who suffered from depression were 3.24 times more likely to develop PD than their non-depressed study counterparts.