Women who have more years of fertility (the time from first menstruation to menopause) have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease than women with fewer years, according to a large, new study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
“These findings, involving nearly 74,000 women, suggest that longer exposure to the body’s own, or endogenous, hormones, including estrogen, may help protect the brain cells that are affected by Parkinson’s disease,” says lead author Rachel Saunders-Pullman, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., assistant professor of neurology at Einstein and attending physician in neurology at Beth Israel Medical Center, an affiliate of Einstein’s in Manhattan.
An abstract of the study was released today by the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). Further study details will be presented at AAN’s 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 25 – May 2, 2009.
After Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease is the most common neurodegenerative disease. About 1.5 million Americans currently have Parkinson’s, characterized by symptoms that can include tremor (shaking), slowness of movement, rigidity (stiffness), and difficulty with balance. The condition typically develops after the age of 60, although 15 percent of those diagnosed are under 50. There is no cure for Parkinson’s, although medications or surgery can ease symptoms of the disease.
Parkinson’s disease is almost twice as common in men as in women, and researchers have long hypothesized that sex hormones might play a role in the disease.
In the current study, researchers analyzed the records of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study and focused on those women who developed Parkinson’s disease. The study involved about 73,973 women who underwent natural menopause.
The study found that women who had a fertile lifespan of more than 39 years had about a 25 percent lower risk of developing Parkinson’s compared with women who had a fertile lifespan shorter than 33 years.
In addition, the data showed that women who had four or more pregnancies were about 20 percent more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than were women who had three or fewer pregnancies. “One explanation for this finding is that the post-partum period, which is typically one with lower levels of estrogen, subtracts from a woman’s total fertile lifespan,” says co-author Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and population health and the principal investigator of the WHI study at Einstein.
“Overall, our findings might lead one to assume that hormone therapy would make sense as a neuroprotective agent,” says Dr. Saunders-Pullman. “However, we also found that women who were taking hormone therapy did not have a lower risk for Parkinson’s. Thus, our data does not support a role for treatment with exogenous hormones, that is, hormones that originate outside the body, to prevent Parkinson’s.”
In fact, hormone therapy can have harmful neurological effects. “Earlier studies in the Women’s Health Initiative demonstrated that hormone therapy increases one’s risk for both stroke and dementia,” says Dr. Wassertheil-Smoller. “Clearly, we need to conduct more research into estrogen’s effects on the brain.”
The study was supported by the Thomas Hartman Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the National Institutes of Health.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation’s premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. It is the home to some 2,000 faculty members, 750 M.D. students, 350 Ph.D. students (including 125 in combined M.D./Ph.D. programs) and 380 postdoctoral investigators. Last year, Einstein received more than $130 million in support from the NIH. This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Through its extensive affiliation network involving five hospital centers in the Bronx, Manhattan and Long Island — which includes Montefiore Medical Center, The University Hospital and Academic Medical Center for Einstein — the College runs one of the largest post-graduate medical training program in the United States, offering approximately 150 residency programs to more than 2,500 physicians in training. For more information, please visit www.aecom.yu.edu
Beth Israel Medical Center is a 1,374-bed, full-service tertiary teaching hospital that was founded on Manhattan’s Lower East Side before the turn of the 20th Century. The Medical Center serves individuals and families from every walk of life throughout New York City and beyond through two divisions: the Milton and Carroll Petrie Division in Lower Manhattan, and the Kings Highway Division in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. With world-class specialists in areas including heart disease, cancer, neurosurgery, minimally invasive surgery, pain medicine and palliative care, Beth Israel is widely known for combining medical excellence with clinically innovative programs. As University Hospital and the Manhattan campus for Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Beth Israel is also dedicated to teaching and nurturing top-notch physicians of tomorrow. For more information about Beth Israel and its services, log on to www.wehealny.org