According to a recently written, soon-to-be-published-in-hard-copy-but-available-now-online research article, people who suffer from asthma are at increased risk for developing Parkinson’s disease.
To quote the conclusion:
Patients with asthma had an elevated risk of developing Parkinson’s disease later in life, and we observed a dose-dependent relationship between greater asthma severity and a higher risk of subsequent Parkinson’s disease.
I work in the Bronx, which has an incredibly high rate of asthma in children. According to an article I found in the NIH online library, the statistics are frightening:
In the Bronx, New York, one of the poorest counties in the US, asthma is the leading cause of hospitalization and of school absence for children. Pediatric asthma prevalence rates in Bronx children far exceed national pediatric asthma rates. In a school-based sample, 15.5% of 4–5-year-old Bronx children were identified as having asthma compared with 9.2% of New York City students overall and 8.9% of US children 2 to 17 years of age. Asthma morbidity rates are also much higher for Bronx children than for other US children. Bronx children are twice as likely to be hospitalized for asthma and are more likely to die of asthma than other US children.
Major reasons for why Bronx children have high rates of asthma include the following:
- There are many highways wending their way through the borough en route to the rest of New York City.
- Many public school are located near the busiest highways.
- The borough is also home to a dozen waste treatment plants and the city’s wholesale meat, fish, fruit and vegetable markets.
- In general, the Bronx has worse air pollution than the rest of the city.
Another article reported that
…according to the New York City Department of Health, the asthma hospitalization rate for Bronx children is 70 percent higher than the rest of the city – and 700 percent higher than the rest of New York State (excluding New York City).
Which, to my mind, is shocking, tragic and criminal. And it’s perhaps another example of how the lives of the underclass don’t matter in the USA. (A close friend who was elected to the New York City Council and later to the New York State Senate told me that “Nobody in the city or state governments cares about the Bronx.” I can’t imagine these conditions would persist if the Bronx was primarily a wealthy borough.)
I don’t feel there is much I can do to hasten a clean-up of the air in the Bronx. (OK, prove me wrong….) However, by participating in many clinical trials for Parkinson’s disease research, I may help speed up the process of finding better treatments and/or a cure for PD, which will reduce needless suffering down the line.
I’ll have to write about my experiences as a PD guinea pig another day…
Meanwhile, I’m left to ponder this equation:
Asthma = Increased Risk for Parkinson’s Disease
