Objective: To assess whether alcohol consumption (AC) is independently associated with cognitive decline (CD) in PD.

Background: AC is linked to dementia and neurological damage among many other health problems [1]. However, some studies show that moderate AC patterns have protective effects for cognition [2]. PD patients have a six fold increase in dementia risk compared to general population [3]. Nevertheless, the effect of AC on CD has not been sufficiently studied in PD.

Method: We conducted an observational longitudinal PD study for 5 years to assess the relationship between CD and AC consumption.
We evaluated global cognition using the PD Cognitive Rating Scale (PD‑CRS) and registered AC, education level and cardiovascular risk factors.
We evaluated the longitudinal relationship between AC and CD using linear mixed effect regression (LMER).

Results: We recruited 123 PD patients. The mean follow-up was 58 months and of 4 visits per patient. We found no statistical relationship between AC and other variables: sex, educational level, cardiovascular risk factors and years of PD evolution or punctuation on Part MDS Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale III (MDS-UPDRS-III).
The mean weekly AC was 66,6g. We found that the most frequently consumed alcoholic beverage was red wine (46.3%). None of the abstainers were former alcoholics.
On LMER we found that AC was associated with lower CD (β=0.02 PD-CRS points per weekly AC gram, p=0.01). The association remained significant after controlling for hypertension (p= 0.006), diabetes (p=0.049), dyslipidemia (p=0.049), age (p=0.007) and education (p=0.01). We performed an exploratory analysis that showed that the protective effect of AC was significant up to 219g, but did not hold for higher AC.
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Conclusion: A moderate AC pattern could be protective for cognition in PD patients. These results need to be replicated in further studies addressing not only CD but also outcomes related to AC harmful effects.
The predominance of red wine among the alcoholic beverages consumed could have influenced the positive result found due to the antioxidant properties of the polyphenolic compounds it contains [4].

References: 1. Di Castelnuovo AF, Costanzo S, de Gaetano G. Alcohol and the global burden of disease. Lancet. 2019 Jun 15;393(10189):2389. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30725-1. PMID: 31204671.
2. Rehm J, Hasan OSM, Black SE, Shield KD, Schwarzinger M. Alcohol use and dementia: a systematic scoping review. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2019 Jan 5;11(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s13195-018-0453-0. PMID: 30611304; PMCID: PMC6320619.
3. Aarsland D, Andersen K, Larsen JP, Lolk A, Nielsen H, Kragh-Sørensen P. Risk of dementia in Parkinson’s disease: a community-based, prospective study. Neurology. 2001 Mar 27;56(6):730-6. doi: 10.1212/wnl.56.6.730. PMID: 11274306.
4. Khorshidi F, Poljak A, Liu Y, Lo JW, Crawford JD, Sachdev PS. Resveratrol: A “miracle” drug in neuropsychiatry or a cognitive enhancer for mice only? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Ageing Res Rev. 2021 Jan;65:101199. doi: 10.1016/j.arr.2020.101199. Epub 2020 Oct 22. PMID: 33303422.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/influence-of-alcohol-consumption-on-cognitive-decline-in-parkinson-disease/