Objective
To study the influence of occupational pesticide use on Parkinson's disease (PD) in a population with information on various occupational, residential, and household sources of pesticide exposure.
Methods
In a population-based case control study in Central California, we used structured interviews to collect occupational history details including pesticide use in jobs, duration of use, product names, and personal protective equipment use from 360 PD cases and 827 controls. We linked reported products to California's pesticide product label database and identified pesticide active ingredients and occupational use by chemical class including fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides. Employing unconditional logistic regression, we estimated odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for PD and occupational pesticide use.
Results
Ever occupational use of carbamates increased risk of PD by 455%, while organophosphorus (OP) and organochlorine (OC) pesticide use doubled risk. PD risk increased 110-211% with ever occupational use of fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides. Using any pesticide occupationally for >10 years doubled the risk of PD compared with no occupational pesticide use. Surprisingly, we estimated higher risks among those reporting use of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Conclusions
Our findings not only provide additional evidence that occupational pesticide exposures increase PD risk, but do so even after controlling for other sources of pesticide exposure; specifically, occupational use of carbamates, OPs, and OCs, as well as of fungicides, herbicides, or insecticides as a group increased risk. Interestingly, PPE use, particularly use of gloves, did not provide protection in this population.
Background
Studies suggested that variants in the ABCB1 gene encoding P-glycoprotein, a xenobiotic transporter, may increase susceptibility to pesticide exposures linked to Parkinson’s Disease (PD) risk.
Objectives
To investigate the joint impact of two ABCB1 polymorphisms and pesticide exposures on PD risk.
Methods
In a population-based case control study, we genotyped ABCB1 gene variants at rs1045642 (c.3435C/T) and rs2032582 (c.2677G/T/A) and assessed occupational exposures to organochlorine (OC) and organophosphorus (OP) pesticides based on self-reported occupational use and record-based ambient workplace exposures for 282 PD cases and 514 controls of European ancestry. We identified active ingredients in self-reported occupational use pesticides from a California database and estimated ambient workplace exposures between 1974 and 1999 employing a geographic information system together with records for state pesticide and land use. With unconditional logistic regression, we estimated marginal and joint contributions for occupational pesticide exposures and ABCB1 variants in PD.
Results
For occupationally exposed carriers of homozygous ABCB1 variant genotypes, we estimated odds ratios of 1.89 [95% confidence interval (CI): (0.87, 4.07)] to 3.71 [95% CI: (1.96, 7.02)], with the highest odds ratios estimated for occupationally exposed carriers of homozygous ABCB1 variant genotypes at both SNPs; but we found no multiplicative scale interactions.
Conclusions
This study lends support to a previous report that commonly used pesticides, specifically OCs and OPs, and variant ABCB1 genotypes at two polymorphic sites jointly increase risk of PD.
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