Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative brain disease affecting around 1% of people aged 60 years or more, with many patients newly diagnosed every year. People affected by PD experience symptoms like shaking, slowness in movements and rigidity as well as mental and behavioural symptoms, which tend to increase with disease progression. A recent study has hypothesized that a drug that has been used for decades for the treatment of pulmonary diseases, namely salbutamol, may prevent the onset of PD. Based on this hypothesis, salbutamol and other similar drugs could be used to prevent the onset of PD and slow down its progression in patients already affected by the disease. We propose to test this hypothesis using data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). We will compare all patients with PD to similar individuals without PD. We will then determine how many of them took salbutamol and other similar respiratory drugs before the PD diagnosis. The findings of this study will help us better evaluate whether these drugs can reduce the risk of developing PD.
A recent study hypothesized that salbutamol, a beta2-adrenoceptor (beta2AR) agonist, might have a protective effect in the development of PD. To test this hypothesis, we will assemble a cohort of all individuals in the CPRD aged 50 or over between 1995 and 2016. We will exclude patients with PD or patients who were prescribed antiparkinsonian drugs before cohort entry and patients previously exposed to beta2AR agonists or beta antagonists before cohort entry. Within this cohort, all incident cases of PD will be matched to ten controls per case on age, sex, general practice, calendar year of cohort entry, and duration of follow-up. Conditional logistic regression will be used to estimate odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals of PD associated with the ever use, cumulative duration of use, and cumulative dose of beta2AR agonists compared with no use. In all models, exposure to beta2AR agonists will be lagged by one year to take into account a biologically plausible latency time window. The same analyses will be repeated for exposure to beta-blockers. In addition to the matching variables, all models will be adjusted for potential confounders. We will perform several sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of our findings.
Parkinson's disease.
Samy Suissa - Chief Investigator - Sir Mortimer B Davis Jewish General Hospital
Christel Renoux - Corresponding Applicant - McGill University
Francesco Giorgianni - Collaborator - Sir Mortimer B Davis Jewish General Hospital
Pierre Ernst - Collaborator - McGill University
Sophie Dell'Aniello - Collaborator - McGill University