Diabetes Prevalence Is Similar in Patients With and Without Parkinson’s

The prevalence of diabetes is similar between patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and those without PD, according to a new in the September issue of Diabetes Care. "Previous observational studies reported inconsistent results on the association between diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, and data on the risk of developing incident diabetes in relation to Parkinson’s disease are scarce," Dr. Christoph R. Meier, of University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues write.

Using the U.K.-based General Practice Research Database, the researchers compared diabetes prevalence between 3637 patients with PD and 3637 matched controls without PD. They also conducted a follow-up study with a nested case-control analysis to quantify the risk of developing new-onset diabetes in association with PD.

The prevalence of diabetes was similar in patients with PD (n = 291, 8%) and without PD (n = 308, 8.5%) (odds ratio [OR] = 0.95), the investigators say. Incident diabetes developed in 106 patients: 35 patients (33%) with a prior PD diagnosis and 71 (67%) with no history of PD (crude relative risk of 0.55). In the nested case-control analysis, the risk of developing diabetes was lower in patients with PD (adjusted OR 0.53).

The lower risk of incident diabetes in the PD patients was limited to those who were taking levodopa, however.

"In this observational study, diabetes prevalence was closely similar between patients with Parkinson’s disease and subjects without," the authors conclude. "The risk of developing incident diabetes was lower for patients with Parkinson’s disease than for (subjects) without, a finding that was limited to Parkinson’s disease patients who were using levodopa."

Diabetes Care 2008;31:1808-1812.

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