Inflammablog3

While researching more of the scientific articles I came to find an interesting article relating to anti-inflammatory drug use and the risk for Parkinson's disease.

Evidence from studies suggests a role of neuroinflammation in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). This study takes advantage of the well established American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS-II) Nutrition Cohort, and was able to further examine the relation between NSAID use and PD risk with more detailed information on different types of NAIDs. The cohort is a study that was initiated in 1992 to investigate the factors for cancer. Participants were from a cohort who replied to a mailed survey in 1982. In 1992 they answered a questionnaire on four types of common used analgesics. Follow-up surveys were conducted in 1997,1999, and 2001. In 2001's survey a specific question on the lifetime occurrences of PD was asked. Follow-up started on the date of return of the 1992 questionnaire and ended on the date when the first symptoms of PD were noticed for PD cases or September 30, 2001 for participants without PD.

In the '92 questionnaire, participants were asked whether they took the following analgesics regularly during the past year: aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or other nonsteroidal analgesics. They were also asked how many days per month they took each drug, how many tablets they took per day, and the duration of use. The '97 survey asked about "baby or low dosage aspirin" and "regular or extra strength aspirin". Four baby aspirin was counted as one tablet. Users were categorized according to dosage: fewer than 2 tablets/ week; 2 to 6.9 tablets/week; and 1 or more tablets a day. Results of the study showed significant inverse association was suggested between the cumulative updated dosage of ibuprofen use and PD risk. Overall, ibuprofen users had a lower PD risk than nonusers. Unlike ibuprofen, the use of aspirin and other NSAIDs, or acetiminophen was not associated with PD risk. Non aspirin NSAID users had a 26% lower risk than nonusers.

Results were consistent with previous findings that users of non aspirin NSAIDs but no aspirin, had a lower risk for PD than nonusers. This study also further suggested that only certain non-aspirin NSAIDs such as ibuprofen reduce the risk for PD. However there is insufficient information on the optimal dosage, and it remains uncertain whether this effect is mediated by COX inhibition or through other mechanisms specific to ibuprofen and possibly some other selected NSAIDs.

The full article can be found on PubMed, the title of the article is: Nonsteroidal Antiinflammatory Drug use and the Risk for Parkinson's Disease.