One-year survivors of a heart attack appear to be slightly less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease later in life. That’s according to a new study examining health registries from the Danish National Health Service.
Researchers compared the risk of Parkinson’s disease and secondary Parkinsonism – a term used to refer to symptoms of Parkinson disease such as slow movements and tremors that are caused by another condition – among about 182,000 patients who had first-time heart attacks between 1995 and 2016 and more than 909,000 controls matched for age, sex and year of heart attack diagnosis.
They found that when compared to the control group, there was a 20% lower risk of Parkinson’s disease among people who had a heart attack and a 28% lower risk of Parkinsonism among those who had a heart attack.
“We have previously found that following a heart attack, the risk of neurovascular complications such as ischemic stroke or vascular dementia is markedly increased, so the finding of a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease was somewhat surprising,” said lead study author Jens Sundbøll, M.D., Ph.D., from the departments of clinical epidemiology and cardiology at the Aarhus University Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark. “These findings indicate that the risk of Parkinson’s disease is at least not increased following a heart attack and should not be a worry for patients or a preventive focus for clinicians at follow-up.”
Study results were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
