Can diabetes cause Parkinson’s disease?

Majority don’t develop Parkinson’s

Although the study could not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, Dr Warner cited two possible reasons for a link between the two diseases.

First, he said, there could be “shared genetic predisposition to develop [both] type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s.” And then “there may be shared pathways in leading to development of diabetes and Parkinson’s,” he added. While the exact nature of such a connection remains unclear, Dr Warner suggested it might involve the insulin production and glucose control problems that characterise diabetes.

“Unlike most tissues in the body, brain cells are almost totally reliant on glucose as a source of energy,” Dr Warner noted. “So if there is a problem in how insulin controls the use of glucose by cells, this may affect certain groups of brain cells selectively.”

Dr Warner is a professor of clinical neurology with the University College London Institute of Neurology, as well as the Queen Square Brain Bank for Neurological Disorder, both in London. He and his colleagues published their findings online in the journal Neurology.

For their study, the investigators used data from the English “Hospital Episode Statistics” database to identify two million British patients newly diagnosed with diabetes from 1999 through 2011. This group was then stacked up against six million British patients who had initially sought care during the same time frame for non-diabetes related issues, such as sprains, varicose veins, appendectomies or hip replacements.

Among diabetic patients 25 to 44 years old, 58 of over 130 700 people developed Parkinson’s, compared with 280 out of nearly 2.6 million similarly aged non-diabetics. That translated into a fourfold greater Parkinson’s risk among those with diabetes, the researchers said. Drug regimens and smoking histories were not considered in the current analysis; nor were patients seeking diabetes care outside a hospital setting.

Dr. Michael Okun, medical director of the National Parkinson’s Foundation, called the findings “not surprising, as the collective evidence from multiple studies has been converging on the idea of some link or association between Parkinson’s and diabetes”.

According to Dr. Okun, “There are many potential explanations for a link between the two diseases, but in younger patients, genetics likely plays a key role. In older patients, the degenerative process itself may disrupt brain-driven endocrine pathways, including those related to insulin and to sugar management.”

Dr. Okun, who also serves as the chair of neurology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, said, “At this point, the mechanisms are unknown, and will require careful research.”

He said it’s important to stress that although diabetes drugs are currently candidates to treat or prevent Parkinson’s disease, they are not recommending this approach until more compelling data is available.

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