Diabetes and Parkinson’s Disease
People with type 2 diabetes appear to have an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease later in life, a large cohort study suggests.
A cohort of 2,017,115 individuals with a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes was constructed and compared to a reference cohort of 6,173,208 people without diabetes. They found that people with type 2 diabetes had a 32% increased risk of developing later Parkinson’s disease than those without diabetes. This risk was considerably higher in younger patients with type 2 diabetes who had a fourfold increased risk of developing Parkinson’s compared with nondiabetics, and in patients who had diabetic complications, who had a 49% increased risk.
Type 2 diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin and tissues becoming resistant to the effects of insulin. Neurons in the brain are more reliant on glucose to produce energy than other cells in the body as they can’t use fat in the same way as other cells can. Therefore, it follows that if there is a problem with insulin sensitivity, this could have a particularly detrimental effect on neurons in the brain.
