Pesticides and Parkinsons

Heavily-restricted Rotenone

There’s good news and bad news regarding Parkinson’s Disease coming across the wire recently.

First the bad news.

US study links pesticides to Parkinsons

From ScienceDaily:

New research shows a link between use of two pesticides, rotenone and paraquat, and Parkinson’s disease. People who used either pesticide developed Parkinson’s disease approximately 2.5 times more often than non-users.

This news isn’t “big” news. Studies have shown links between rotenone and Parkinsons before, paraquat has been previously fingered, too, and Fair Food Fight has been following the link between pesticides and Parkinsons for quite some time. Mostly this new study implies what many have been pondering for years — an environmental cause for Parkinson’s.

So let’s move on to the good news. Two other, nice, big, chunky studies shows that a berry a day may keep the Parkinsons at bay. From Medpage Today:

Dietary data from almost 130,000 men and women revealed that those with the highest intakes of anthocyanins — a type of flavonoid found in berries — had a 22% reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease compared with those who ate the least (P=0.02), Xiang Gao, MD, PhD, of Harvard, and colleagues reported in an early release from the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting, to be held in Honolulu in April.

“Anthocyanin seems to be protective of Parkinson’s in both men and women,” Gao told MedPage Today.

The truth is, though, that scientists still don’t know what causes Parkinson’s Disease, so without that information, these discovered associations and links are just that — associations and links. As the head researcher said,

“I think it’s still too early to recommend the use of flavonoids or anthocyanins to treat Parkinson’s disease or to prevent Parkinson’s disease,” Gao told MedPage Today.

But it couldn’t hurt, right? Laying off the pesticides and gulping down blueberries?