Objective: Our aim is to illustrate the incidence of vascular risk factors (VRF) in a cohort of patients with confirmed Parkinson’s disease (PD) and characterize their relationship to disease development, specifically with respect to differences in distribution per sex.

Background: There is controversial evidence on whether the incidence of VRF is increased or decreased in patients with PD. There are some studies that state VRF increase the progression of PD while others state that dopaminergic therapy reduces VRF in PD patients.^1,2 There have been recent studies that outline the incidence of such risk factors in men and women with dementia, but to our knowledge, differences in the prevalence of VRF among PD patients with respect to sex has not been explored.

Method: The Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) study dataset was queried for patients with a diagnosis of PD and healthy controls enrolled between 2010 and 2021. We considered the following VRF: hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, coronary artery disease, and history of smoking tobacco. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the association between PD and clinical variables, while the cox proportional-hazards analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between these variables and risk of developing PD over time. Analyses were conducted cumulatively and individually per sex.

Results: A total of 987 patients (39.7% female, 94.5% white) with a mean age of 63.1±10.2 enrolled into the PPMI were queried. 767 patients (77.7%) of the cohort had a diagnosis of PD. Among the selected patients, 277 (28.1%) had a report of at least one metabolic risk factor. Via the multivariable logistic regression analysis, we found a significant association between diagnosis of PD and presence of dyslipidemia specifically among males (OR=3.08, 95% CI 1.15-8.26, p=0.025). Cox proportional-hazards analysis showed higher risk of PD with presence of dyslipidemia among males after adjusting for race and education level (HR=1.44, 95% CI 1.04-1.99, p<0.03).

Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that presence of dyslipidemia is linked to higher risk of developing PD specifically in males. This finding may play an important role for surveillance of PD development among this specific demographic, and future studies further exploring such a relationship is warranted.

References: 1. Li HJ, Yu Y, Chen Y, Liang HY. Vascular risk factors aggravate the progression of Parkinson’s disease: a five-year follow-up study in Chinese patients. Int J Clin Exp Med. 2015;8(6):9897-9903. Published 2015 Jun 15.
2. Scigliano G, Ronchetti G, Girotti F, Musicco M. Sympathetic modulation by levodopa reduces vascular risk factors in Parkinson disease. Parkinsonism Relat Disord. 2009;15(2):138-143. doi:10.1016/j.parkreldis.2008.04.036
3. Anstey KJ, Peters R, Mortby ME, et al. Association of sex differences in dementia risk factors with sex differences in memory decline in a population-based cohort spanning 20-76 years. Sci Rep. 2021;11(1):7710. Published 2021 Apr 8. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-86397-7

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/sex-differences-in-vascular-risk-factors-for-parkinsons-disease/