Diabetes May Raise Risks of Parkinson’s Disease

People with diabetes may have a slightly increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, suggests a U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) study involving nearly 289,000 older U.S. adults.  Of 21,600 participants with diabetes, 172 (0.8%) were diagnosed with Parkinson’s over a 15-year follow-up period, as compared with 1,393 cases (0.5%) among the 267,000 men and women who were diabetes-free at the study’s start. When the researchers accounted for other factors — like age, weight and smoking habits — diabetes itself was linked to a 41% increase in the risk of future Parkinson’s.