A new study suggests that people suffering from depression have three times the risk of getting Parkinson's disease after a decade.
Parkinson's is a disease that causes a person to lose motor skills because of the nerve cell breakdown inside the brain. Symptoms include stiff muscles and slow movement. Affecting around 127,000 in the population or one person for every 500 people, Parkinson's is next to Alzheimer's as the topmost prevalent neurodegenerative illnesses in the U.K.
A team of scientists from the Taipei Veteran's General Hospital, Taiwan studied 10 years worth of data of 4,634 depression-diagnosed patients and 18,544 who were depression-free.
Their findings show that depression is an independent factor in increasing risk of the disease. Another similarly probable theory is that depression is only an early symptom of Parkinson's.
Sixty-six out of 4,634 or 1.42 percent of the depressed patients had Parkinson's after 10 years but only 97 out of 18,544 0.52 percent had the same disease to those not diagnosed with depression in the same follow-up period.
The researchers considered all other factors and concluded that there are about 3.24 times more risk of developing Parkinson's after a decade for those people with depression that those who haven't.
From a thousand people found with depression, about fourteen get Parkinson's within a decade. Only about five are diagnosed out of a thousand without any depression.
Lead author Dr. Albert Yang said, "Depression is linked in other studies to illnesses such as cancer and stroke. Our study suggests that depression may also be an independent risk factor for Parkinson's disease." He believes however that there is much more work to do.
It is still unclear if the depression is a cause or an early sign or symptoms of Parkinson's disease. The team is also thinking that the medicine used for depression or antidepressants could also be helping the disease to progress.
The study was published in the Oct. 2 issue of the online journal Neurology.
