Occupation and parkinsonism in three movement disorders clinics

Abstract

Consistent with prior studies, healthcare, teaching, and farming were common occupations in Parkinson disease (PD) patients, but welders were not over-represented. Even though several occupations were associated with younger age at PD diagnosis, these results may reflect biases inherent in specialty clinic surveys, including over-representation of younger, employed, and insured patients. Carefully designed analytic studies utilizing appropriate control populations will be required to test hypotheses regarding occupation and PD risk.

Epidemiology and etiology of Parkinson’s disease: a review of the evidence

“…In a case series study, farming occurred three times more frequently among PD patients than expected [352]. A mortality study including 26 US states found increased proportional mortality due to PD among livestock farmers, but not among crop farmers [353].…”

“…A case-series study that included more than 2,200 patients with PD or parkinsonism from three movement disorders clinics in New York, Atlanta, and Sunnyvale compared occupational frequencies between patients and the general population [352]. Among patients, more physicians and teachers than expected were observed, but for medical occupations other than physician, fewer cases than expected were observed [352].…”

Immunotoxicology of arc welding fume: Worker and experimental animal studies

“…Neurobehavioral changes have been reported in exposed welders (Bowler et al, 2007a, b;Ellingsen et al, 2008), and case reports show Mn accumulates in dopaminergic brain regions of welders exposed to high concentrations of welding fume (Sadek et al, 2003;Josephs et al, 2005). In addition, some studies describe a potential link between welding and Parkinsonism, and suggest the possibility of an early-onset Parkinsonism among welders (Racette et al, 2001(Racette et al, , 2005, whereas other studies do not (Goldman et al, 2005;Stampfer, 2009;Tanner et al, 2009). Recent animal studies demonstrated that repeated exposure to Mn-containing welding fumes modulated molecular factors associated with synaptic transmission, oxidative stress, neuro-inflammation, and mitochondrial dysfunction in dopaminergic targets in rat brains, as well as induced transcriptional changes in a variety of PARK genes (Sriram et al, 2010a, b).…”

Parkinson’s disease among gardeners exposed to pesticides – a Danish cohort study

“…This is the first study, to our knowledge, to investigate the risk for Parkinson's disease among gardeners. Several studies have found positive associations between farming and Parkinson's disease (12)(13)(14)(15)(16), including a Danish study, in which men working in agriculture and horticulture had a significantly higher risk for a first hospital admission for Parkinson's disease (SHR 132, 95% CI 111-156) than the general Danish population (17). It has been suggested that the increased risks of farmers Kenborg et al and agricultural workers are related to exposure to pesticide (17,18), and this hypothesis has been examined in several recent epidemiological studies, most of which found positive associations (18-27), while few were unable to find such effects (28)(29)(30).…”