Parkinson’s & Education level?
Posted by Patti on November 24th, 2005 / Print This Post
I wonder why this would be the case…
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 23 (HealthDay News) — The more education you have, the greater your risk for Parkinson’s disease — and doctors may be among those at highest risk.That’s the conclusion of unusual research in the Nov. 22 issue of the journal Neurology.
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., studied the education levels and occupations of Parkinson’s disease patients living in Olmsted County, Minn., and compared them to people in the general population.
The medical information was collected from the records-linkage system of the Rochester Epidemiology Project to identify all those people in the county who developed Parkinson’s from 1976 through 1995. Their education and occupation was determined through phone interviews and a medical records review.
The study found that people with at least nine years of education were at increased risk of Parkinson’s disease and the risk increased with more education. Doctors had a significantly increased risk of Parkinson’s disease.
Construction workers, miners, oil well drillers, production workers, metal workers and engineers, occupations with presumed high physical activity, had a significantly decreased risk, the study also found.