Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is associated with an increased risk for Parkinson’s disease (PD), according to a study published online Aug. 20 in Neurology.

Xinjie Zhang, from Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, and colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study involving adults without PD aged 37 to 73 years from the U.K. Biobank to examine the association of MetS and its components with the risk for PD. MetS was defined as the presence of three or more of the following: elevated waist circumference, hypertension, dyslipidemia, hypertriglyceridemia, and hyperglycemia. The PD-related polygenic risk score (PRS_PD) was calculated based on the presence of 26 PD-related alleles and was classified as low, moderate, or high.

The study included 467,200 participants, 37.97% with MetS. The researchers found that 3,222 participants developed PD during follow-up (5.01 per 10,000 person-years). For participants with MetS versus those without MetS, the hazard ratio of PD was 1.39. There was a dose-dependent association seen for having a higher number of MetS components and increased PD risk (hazard ratio, 1.14).

The highest PD risk was seen for participants with MetS and high PRS_PD (hazard ratio, 2.58). In a meta-analysis of 24,789,538 participants with 98,582 incident cases of PD, participants with MetS had a pooled relative risk of 1.29 for PD.

“Our findings suggest that metabolic syndrome may be a modifiable risk factor for Parkinson’s disease,” co-author Weili Xu, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, said in a statement. “Future studies are needed to see whether working to control metabolic syndrome could help prevent Parkinson’s disease.”

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