Parkinson's Disease Risks Associated with Cigarette Smoking, Alcohol Consumption, and Caffeine Intake

Abstract

A reduced risk for Parkinson's disease (PD) among cigarette smokers has been observed consistently during the past 30 years. Recent evidence suggests that caffeine may also be protective. Findings are presented regarding associations of PD with smoking, caffeine intake, and alcohol consumption from a case-control study conducted in western Washington State in 1992-2000. Incident PD cases (n = 210) and controls (n = 347), frequency matched on gender and age were identified from enrollees of the Group Health Cooperative health maintenance organization. Exposure data were obtained by in-person questionnaires. Ever having smoked cigarettes was associated with a reduced risk of PD (odds ratio (OR) = 0.5, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.4, 0.8). A stronger relation was found among current smokers (OR = 0.3, 95% CI: 0.1, 0.7) than among ex-smokers (OR = 0.6, 95% CI: 0.4, 0.9), and there was an inverse gradient with pack-years smoked (trend p < 0.001). No associations were detected for coffee consumption or total caffeine intake or for alcohol consumption. However, reduced risks were observed for consumption of 2 cups/day or more of tea (OR = 0.4, 95% CI: 0.2, 0.9) and two or more cola drinks/day (OR = 0.6, 95% CI: 0.3, 1.4). The associations for tea and cola drinks were not confounded by smoking or coffee consumption. Am J Epidemiol 2002;155:732-8.

Atypical cancer pattern in patients with Parkinson's disease

“…Large prospective studies have uniformly shown that the incidence of Parkinson's disease is about 60% lower among current smokers and 40% lower among past smokers than among those who have never smoked, and that the magnitude of the risk reduction diminishes with time since quitting smoking (Hernan et al, 2002(Hernan et al, , 2001. Similarly reduced risk estimates for Parkinson's disease linked with cigarette smoking were observed in large, well-conducted case -control studies (Gorell et al, 1999;Checkoway et al, 2002). These findings led to the hypothesis that constituents of tobacco smoke can reduce or abolish the brain damage that triggers Parkinson's disease.…”

Epidemiology and etiology of Parkinson’s disease: a review of the evidence

“…Although many of the case-control studies reported ORs below unity, the association was nonsignificant in most studies [142,143,293,298,303,309,310,380,407,408,410,413,415,423]. A Swedish study that investigated the relationship of PD with beer, wine, and liquor reported inverse associations for each of these types of alcoholic beverages in univariate analyses.…”

“…Of the 7 case-control studies that investigated tea intake for a possible association with PD, three reported an inverse association [295,310,358], three found no association [142,144,415], and one reported an increased risk [136]. The Leisure World cohort study and a Finnish cohort study reported no associations [434,481].…”

Cost‐effectiveness of increasing the reach of smoking cessation interventions in Germany: results from the EQUIPTMOD

“…For missing inputs, Cochrane effectiveness inputs from a wide range of studies world‐wide were used, and represented rigorous and well‐accepted evidence. Some reported but controversial protective effects of smoking, such as those regarding Parkinson disease 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, were not accounted for in this model. Some diseases attributable to smoking 5 were also not included in the model, as the true impact of smoking could not be estimated, and some interventions available only in the United Kingdom but not in Germany were also not considered.…”