Trace elements have been recognized to play an important role in the development of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, it is difficult to precisely identify the relationship between these elements and the progression of PD because of an insufficient number of patients. In this study, quantifications of selenium (Se), copper (Cu), iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) by atomic absorption spectrophotometry were performed in plasma from 238 PD patients and 302 controls recruited from eastern China, which is so far the largest cohort of PD patients and controls for measuring plasma levels of these elements. We found that plasma Se and Fe concentrations were significantly increased whereas Cu and Zn concentrations decreased in PD patients as compared with controls. Meanwhile, these four elements displayed differential changes with regard to age. Linear and logistic regression analyses revealed that both Fe and Zn were negatively correlated with age in PD patients. Association analysis suggests that lower plasma Se and Fe levels may reduce the risk for PD, whereas lower plasma Zn is probably a PD risk factor. Finally, a model was generated to predict PD patients based on the plasma concentrations of these four trace elements as well as other features such as sex and age, which achieved an accuracy of 80.97±1.34% using 10-fold cross-validation. In summary, our data provide new insights into the roles of Se, Cu, Fe and Zn in PD progression.
Although emerging clinical evidence supports that magnesium deficiency is a risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes, there are sparse studies concerning the dynamic change of serum magnesium with the risk of diabetes and its early stages. In this nested case-control study, we performed a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test or a standardized steamed bread meal test in 178 subjects with incident glucose metabolism impairment (33 with type 2 diabetes and 145 with prediabetes) and 178 matched controls at baseline and at 3-year follow-up and determined the associations between baseline serum magnesium levels as well as changes in serum magnesium levels at follow-up and odds of prediabetes and diabetes. After adjusting for potential confounders, the odds ratios of risk for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes in the highest quartile of serum magnesium levels were 0.22 (95 % confidence intervals [CI] 0.10-0.49; p for trend <0.001) and 0.02 (95 % CI 0.00-0.29; p for trend = 0.009), respectively, as compared with the lowest quartile. In addition, a significant decline in the serum magnesium level was detected in type 2 diabetes cases (p = 0.015) at 3 years as compared with at baseline. These results suggest that a low magnesium level is an independent risk factor for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, and that the reduction of serum magnesium is associated with type 2 diabetes in a southern Chinese population.
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