 |
| |
Research | Mini-Monograph
|
| The Role of Early Life Environmental Risk Factors in Parkinson Disease: What Is the Evidence? Giancarlo Logroscino Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Abstract
Parkinson disease (PD) is of unknown but presumably multifactorial etiology. Neuropathologic studies and animal models show that exposure to environmental neurotoxicants can determine progressive damage in the substantia nigra many years before the onset of clinical parkinsonism. Therefore, PD, like other neurologic diseases related to aging, may be determined by exposures present in the environment early during the life span or even during pregnancy. Recent epidemiologic studies have focused on the possible role of environmental risk factors present during adult life or aging. Smoking and coffee drinking have consistently been identified to have protective associations, whereas roles of other risk factors such as pesticide and infections have been reported in some studies but not replicated in others. Both genetic inheritance and sharing of common environment in the same family explain the increased risk of PD of relatives of PD cases compared with relatives of controls in familial aggregation studies. Much evidence indicates that risk factors that have a long latency or a slow effect could be important for late-onset PD. Further epidemiologic studies are warranted in this area. Key words: early life, Parkinson disease, pesticides, place of birth, smoking, toxicants. Environ Health Perspect 113:1234-1238 (2005) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7573 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 26 May 2005]
This article is part of the mini-monograph "Early Environmental Origins of Neurodegenerative Disease in Later Life: Research and Risk Assessment." Address correspondence to G. Logroscino, Department of Epidemiology 3-819, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115 USA. Telephone: (617) 432-2652. Fax: (617) 566-7805. E-mail: glogrosc@hsph.harvard.edu I thank K. Marder and D. Hesdorffer for helpful comments and R. Chaput for help in the preparation of the manuscript. The author declares he has no competing financial interests. Received 1 September 2004 ; accepted 24 March 2005.
The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |
|
|
|
|
