Researchers at Queen Mary, funded by Bart’s Charity, used the electronic primary care records of more than a million people living in East London between 1990 and 2018 to explore early symptoms and risk factors of the disease. Parkinson.
The hearing loss and epilepsy are early features of Parkinson’s disease, according to a new research pioneer of the Queen Mary University of London, the first UK study of the condition in such a diverse population, published in JAMA Neurology.
They found that known symptoms associated with Parkinson’s, including tremor and memory problems, can appear up to 10 and five years before diagnosis, respectively. But they also discovered two new early features of Parkinson’s, epilepsy and hearing loss, and were able to replicate these findings using additional data from the UK Biobank.
While the early signs of Parkinson’s have been described previously, these studies have largely focused on affluent white populations, with patients from minority ethnic groups and those living in areas of high social deprivation largely underrepresented in Parkinson’s research to date.
The new study now provides further evidence of the risk factors and early signs of Parkinson’s, using data from such a diverse and disadvantaged urban population for the first time.
In East London, conditions such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes were associated with increased odds of developing Parkinson’s. The researchers also observed a stronger association between memory ailments within this population than previously described.
East London has one of the highest proportions of Black, South Asian and mixed/other ethnic groups, making up around 45% of residents in the area, compared to 14% in the rest of the UK. It also has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the UK, and 80% of the patients included in the study were from low-income households.
The lead author of the study, Dr. Christina Simonett, Neurologist and doctoral student at Queen Mary University of London, assures that “this is the first study that focuses on the pre-diagnostic phase of Parkinson’s in such a diverse population with high socioeconomic deprivation but with universal access to health care ” .
“People from minority ethnic groups and from disadvantaged areas have been largely underrepresented in Parkinson’s research until now, but to enable us to get a full picture of the condition we need to ensure that the research is inclusive and represents all those affected.” , Add.
Thus, it highlights that the study has discovered these two risk factors and early symptoms, epilepsy and hearing loss. “While previous research has hinted at the association, such as epilepsy being more prevalent in Parkinson’s patients than in the general population, now More research is needed for us to fully understand the relationship.” points.
But in the meantime, he cautions that “it is important for primary care doctors to be aware of these links and understand how early Parkinson’s symptoms can appear, so that patients can get a timely diagnosis and doctors can act early.” to help control the disease.
For his part, Dr. Alastair Noyce, reader in neurology and neuroepidemiology at Queen Mary University of London, who is also an author of the new research, recalls that “people go to their GP with symptoms, but often do not receive treatment. a diagnosis up to five or ten years later. Tremor, for example, is one of the most recognizable symptoms of Parkinson’s, but in our study it was seen ten years before the final diagnosis,” he notes.
Warns that “This is too long for patients to wait. If we are able to diagnose Parkinson’s earlier, we have a real opportunity to intervene sooner and offer treatments that could improve the quality of life of patients”, he assures.
“This study confirms that many of the early symptoms and features of Parkinson’s can occur long before a diagnosis,” he continued. Through our ongoing PREDICT-PD research, we hope to identify people at high risk for Parkinson’s even before obvious symptoms appear – which means we could do more than just improve patients’ quality of life, and perhaps may be in a position to slow down or cure Parkinson’s in the future.”