2024-02-21 06:39:00
Parkinson’s, pesticides and pollution among the triggers of the disease? I study
Il Parkinson’s disease it’s a neurodegenerative diseaseslowly progressive, which affects the central nervous system, more particularly the dopaminergic neurons – which produce dopamine, and is characterized by movement disorders: tremor at rest, rigidity, slowness and decreased movements, leading to instability of posture and gait. The average age of onset of the disease is around 57 years, but it is particularly widespread among the elderly, in fact it affects 10% of people over 80 years of age. In Italy there are around 300 thousand people affected by Parkinson’smostly males, but it seems that the number is destined to increase, affecting a growing number of people still of working age. The neurological symptoms are very subtle and silent and do not appear until damage has occurred to 60-70% of the affected nerve cells. The possible culprit of this terrible disease could be pollution.
Parkinson and industrialization
As the wisesociety.it website replies, a growing number of clinical studies demonstrates what the English doctor James Parkinson actually already hypothesized, who was the first in 1817 to describe the disease in a rather precise manner, so much so that he even gave it its name, and who highlighted the common cause between the onset of the disease and the phenomenon of pollutionincreasing exponentially during the Industrial Revolution.
Recent studies – we were saying – suggest the accuracy of this intuition: it now seems established, in fact, that there is a link between the onset of Parkinson’s disease and the bad air quality, exposure to which is associated with a much higher risk of developing the disease. Poor air quality due to hydrocarbon emissions and solvents used in industries, but also to pesticides and herbicides.
Parkinson’s, the link with air pollution
A study by the Barrow Neurological Institute, in Arizona, published last November in the US medical journal Neurology found a strong link between air pollution and the disease. In particular the researchers studied the geographical relationship between Parkinson’s and air pollution: the people they live in regions with high levels of air pollution they have a 56% higher risk of developing the diseasecompared to those living in regions with lower levels.
The researchers were able to confirm a strong one for the first time correlation between the disease and fine particles in the United States, working on a sample of almost 22 million individuals of which almost 90 thousand were diagnosed in 2009: in particular, people who live in areas with a high level of PM2.5 pollution, i.e. particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 2.5 thousandths of a millimetre, deriving from all types of combustion, including those of car and motorbike engines, energy production systems, wood for domestic heating, fires forestry and many other industrial processes.
The relationship between a person’s previous exposure to fine particles and their subsequent risk of developing the disease was also identified, net of other risk factors, such as age, sex, ethnicity, smoking, low access to medical care.
Parkinson’s, the link with the use of pesticides
We’ve been talking about one for years now correlation between exposure to pesticides e onset of Parkinson’s but it was not clear what they were in particular. It was a research team coordinated by the University of California at Los Angeles that identified 10 Pesticides That Damage Dopamine Neuronswhose death, as we have already mentioned, causes the disease.
From the study, published in May 2023 in Nature Communications, it emerged that these are four insecticides (dicofol, endosulfan, naled, propargite), three herbicides (diquat, endothall, trifluralin) and three fungicides (copper sulphate, basic and pentahydrate, and folpet), substances still in use in the United States. The study began with a history of decades of exposure to 288 pesticides among Parkinson’s patients who had participated in previous studies. This allowed the researchers to determine the effects of long-term exposureidentifying 53 substances that were tested individually to evaluate their toxicity towards dopaminergic neurons, from which the ten above were then skimmed.
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