Death Rate from Parkinson’s Disease on the Rise

Death rate from Parkinson’s disease over the last two decades has risen to 63% in the United States as per a study at Minneapolis, published in the online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The death rate was found to be twice as high in men as in women, and there was a higher death rate in white people than other racial/ethnic groups.

“We know that people are living longer and the general population is getting older, but that doesn’t fully explain the increase we saw in the death rate in people with Parkinson’s. Understanding why more people are dying from this disease is critical if we are going to reverse the trend,” says study author Wei Bao, MD, Ph.D., who conducted the research at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Rising Death Rate

The study evaluated the national death registry of 479,059 people who died of Parkinson’s between 1999 and 2019. It was found that the number of people who died from the disease increased from 5.4 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 8.8 per 100,000 people in 2019. The average annual increase was 2.4%.

The team anticipates possible explanation for this sex difference in death rate is that estrogen, , which leads to higher dopamine levels in parts of the brain, that control motor responses, may protect women from developing Parkinson’s.

In addition, the death rate for white people was 9.7 per 100,000 people, followed by Hispanic people, at 6.5 per 100,000 people, and non-Hispanic Black people, at 4.7 per 100,000 people in 2019.

This may be because Black and Hispanic people have a lesser chance to seek outpatient neurologists due to socioeconomic barriers, thereby reducing their chances of getting the PD diagnosis.

“It’s important to continue to evaluate long-term trends in Parkinson’s death rates. This can inform future research that may help pinpoint why more people are dying of the disease. Also, updating vital statistics about Parkinson’s death rates may be used for priority setting and financing of health care and policy,” says Bao.

One of the limitations of the study was that only one underlying cause that is, people who were recorded as having died of Parkinson’s were included in the study. This may warrant further studies to accurately reflect the prevalence of the disease as a cause of death.

Source-Medindia