14 DAY TRIAL // Evidence obtained while monitoring several thousand people over a decade suggests that depressed people are three times more likely to develop Parkinson's.
In a paper published in yesterday's online issue of the journal Neurology, researchers explain that, in order to investigate the link between depression and Parkinson's, they looked into the medical records of 4,634 people diagnosed with depression, and 18,544 individuals who were not suffering from this condition.
During said period, 66 (1.42%) of the people in the first group were diagnosed with Parkinson's. By comparison, 97 (0.52%) of the volunteers in the second group got the same diagnosis.
This meant that the depressed people were 3.24 times more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, EurekAlert reports.
In light of these findings, researchers theorize that depression might be a risk factor for Parkinson's. On the other hand, it is also possible that it is merely a symptom.
“Many questions remain, including whether depression is an early symptom of Parkinson's disease rather than an independent risk factor for the disease,” says study author Albert C. Yang, MD, PhD, with Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan.
Further investigations are expected to shed more light on this link between depression and Parkinson's disease.