Smoking and Caffeine May Protect Against Parkinson's Disease

April 9, 2007

In families affected by Parkinson's disease, the people who smoked cigarettes and drank a lot of coffee were less likely to develop the disease, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

The findings suggest that both genetic and environmental factors may influence the development of Parkinson's, a progressive neurodegenerative disease marked by trembling of the arms and legs, stiffness and rigidity of the muscles and slowness of movement.

Previous studies have suggested that smokers and coffee drinkers have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease. However, this is the first study to look specifically at cigarette smoking and caffeine consumption within families affected by the disease, the researchers said.

Smoking cigarettes and consuming copious amounts of caffeine carry their own risks and should not be taken up in an attempt to avoid developing Parkinson's disease, cautions study investigator Burton L. Scott, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medicine.

The findings were published in the April 2007 issue of the journal Archives of Neurology. The research was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

The researchers studied the associations between smoking, caffeine and Parkinson's disease in 356 Parkinson's disease patients and 317 family members without the disease.

Individuals with Parkinson's disease were half as likely to report ever smoking and a third as likely to report current smoking compared with unaffected relatives, the researchers found.

Individuals with Parkinson's disease were also less likely to drink large amounts of coffee, the researchers found.

The biological mechanisms through which smoking and caffeine might work in individuals at risk of Parkinson's disease are still not clear, said study co-investigator Mark A. Stacy, M.D., associate professor of medicine and director of the Duke Movement Disorders Center.

"Smoking and caffeine may modify underlying genetic susceptibilities that exist in families with Parkinson's disease, but further work is needed to see how this interaction ultimately plays out," Stacy said.

Source: Duke University Medical Center

4.2 /5 (17 votes)  

Rank 4.2 /5 (17 votes)
Tags

Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins

Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...

Medicine & Health / Research

created 1 hour ago | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Curry spice component may help slow prostate tumor growth

Curcumin, an active component of the Indian curry spice turmeric, may help slow down tumor growth in castration-resistant prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a study from researchers ...

Medicine & Health / Cancer

created 6 hours ago | popularity 4.5 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Both maternal and paternal age linked to autism

Older maternal and paternal age are jointly associated with having a child with autism, according to a recently published study led by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 5 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Team isolates nerve cells involved in storing long term memory and gene proteins associated with them

(Medical Xpress) -- A research team in Taiwan has succeeded in isolating two nerve cells in fruit fly brains that are believed to be the major players in allowing for the formation of long term memories. Furthermore, ...

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created 7 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 1 | with audio podcast report

Seeing colors in music, tasting flavors in shapes may happen in life's early months

Famed violinist Itzhak Perlman sees a deep forest green whenever he plays a B-flat on his Stradivarius' G string. The A on the E string is red.

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 8 hours ago | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 1 | with audio podcast


NASA sees wide-eyed cyclone Jasmine

Cyclone Jasmine's eye has opened wider on NASA satellite imagery, as it moves through the Southern Pacific Ocean.

NASA sees Giovanna reach cyclone strength, threaten Madagascar

Tropical Storm 12S built up steam and became a cyclone on February 10, 2012 as NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead. Residents of east-central Madagascar should prepare for this cyclone to make landfall ...

CIA website offline, Anonymous takes credit

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was unresponsive on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males

A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission

Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber o ...

Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...