During the weekly TTHealthWatch, a podcast from Texas Tech, top medical stories are discussed.  In a recent episode, a new paper that projected rates of Parkinson’s Disease worldwide was one of the topics.  Excerpts from the podcast:  The paper’s authors “project that 25 million+ people are thought to be living with Parkinson’s disease worldwide in 2050, representing a 112% increase from 2021. The primary factor that has to do with this is population aging.” 

Additional excerpts from the podcast:

“Finally, at the very end of the paper, the authors talk about some of the things that are thought to be involved in this — exposure to pesticides and herbicides, and to other environmental toxins as being an important factor. They also talk about air pollution as having something to do with this increasing development. Type 2 diabetes, which increases the risk and the rate of progression for Parkinson’s disease, and then physical activity, coffee, tea, and vitamin E as also things that could potentially be beneficial. Very interestingly, it turns out that there is an association with cigarette smoking that counters one’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and, of course, they say we’re not advocating for cigarette smoking in order to avoid Parkinson’s.” 

Listen to the podcast on MedPage Today

Read the article in BMJ 
Warning!  Lots of statistics!