Parkinson's: What is it and what are the symptoms?
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Parkinson’s is a highly common neurological disorder that afflicts nearly one percent of individuals over the age of 60. The condition affects mainly the central nervous system, which is why it entails complications related to movement. The weakening of nerve cells in the brain causes a shortfall of dopamine production, which the organ needs to regulate movement. This reduction in dopamine may also cause complications in the eyes that could arise years before the onset of symptoms, according to new findings.
The burden of Parkinson’s disease is set to grow in conjunction with ageing populations, but in the absence of disease-halting treatments prevention is key.
The main predisposing factors for the condition include age, genetics, and sex, none of which are modifiable.
The only significant modifiable risk factor known to date is exposure to toxins, but new findings suggest another factor may exist.
According to findings published in the Lancet, mild visual impairment may significantly increase the risk of Parkinson’s Disease.
READ MORE: Parkinson’s: The common health ailment that may raise your risk of Parkinson’s in 10 years
For their study, researchers drew on data from 117,050 participants acquired from the UK Biobank, all aged between 40 and 69.
During the median follow-up period of 5.96 years, a total 222 cases of Parkinson’s Disease were reported.
After adjusting for potential influencing factors, researchers noted that visual impairment was associated with a higher risk of developing Parkinson’s Disease.
The researchers wrote: “This cohort study found that visual impairment was associated with an increased risk of incident PD, suggesting that visual impairment may serve as a modifiable risk factor for prevention of future Parkinson’s.
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“We found that visually impaired individuals had a 2.28 times greater risk of developing PD compared to those who did not have any visual impairment.”
“Our findings suggest that visual impairment may represent a prodromal feature of Parkinson’s.”
The study is not the first of its kind to draw a connection between visual disorders and neurodegenerative disease, but the exact frequency and severity of such associations has remained somewhat of a mystery to date.
In fact, previous studies have found the risk of dementia doubles when people have both visual and hearing impairment.
“There have been numerous studies reporting the association between visual impairment and dementia,” explained the authors.
“Given the consistent evidence on associations between visual impairment and neurodegenerative diseases, we could reasonably speculate a neurodegenerative process occurs in the eye as it does in the brain which could explain the association.”
The authors noted that macular thickness and volume was prevalent in patients with Parkinson’s disease.
“The ‘top-down theory’ might explain visual impairment observed in Parkinson’s Disease,” they explained.
They continued: “Support for this hypothesis came from evidence which demonstrated specific dysfunctions of the visual cortex in Parkinson’s disease.
“The depletion of neurotransmitters such as GABA and dopamine, as well as altered lipid metabolism in the visual cortex of PD patients, could account for visual impairment.”
Visual impairment is defined as any kind of vision loss, whether partial or completely blind.
In the UK, there are approximately two million people living with sight loss, according to the NHS.
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