Association of cardiovascular risk factors and Parkinson's disease - case-control study in South East Hungary.

Background and purpose: Parkinson's disease (PD) has the second highest incidence among neurodegenerative diseases in the world population. The study aimed to investigate the presence of some cardiovascular risk factors - dyslipidemia, diabetes, and hypertension - in PD patients and to compare their risk with non-PD population in South East Hungary.

Methods: A case-control study was conducted at the Department of Neurology, University of Szeged, Hungary. The study included 1299 subjects out of which 620 patients were identified as cases of diagnosed PD and 679 as controls. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to reveal the association of vascular risk factors with PD.

Results: In the univariate analysis, diabetes mellitus was positively associated with PD, while dyslipidemia showed negative association to it in the total population, and no significant associations were found between hypertension and PD. The multivariate logistic regression models showed that the odds of diabetes mellitus was higher (OR=2.86), while the odds of dyslipidemia was lower (OR=0.58) among PD patients than in the control group. Hypertension showed a different pattern by gender: the odds of registered hypertension was significantly lower in female PD patients (OR=0.68), whereas the result was not significant in males.

Conclusion: This is the first study that provides a comprehensive view of the cardiovascular risk factors in PD patients in Hungary and shows considerable relationship between diabetes mellitus and PD.