| Author: | Lam, Wai-man |
| Title: | Parkinson's disease (PD) and young-onset Parkinson's disease (YOPD) : an investigation into genetic and environmental factors |
| Degree: | M.Phil. |
| Year: | 2004 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Parkinson's disease -- Age factors Parkinson's disease -- Genetic aspects Parkinson's disease -- Environmental aspects |
| Department: | Department of Rehabilitation Sciences |
| Pages: | ix, 159, [21] leaves : ill. (some col.) ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Parkinson's disease (PD) is a complex disease. It is environmentally vulnerable. Families with a history of the disease also have a slightly increased risk, although there is no clear mode of inheritance. Apolipoprotein E (APOE) has drawn our special attention because of its role in the central nervous system and that it may be associated with different types of neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer's disease. We have therefore conducted two case-control studies, one to investigate the association between APOE and PD, and the other to identify further any plausible environmental risk factors including family history, medical history, residential history, well water drinking, herbicide and pesticide exposure and diet habit in a Chinese population, especially among Young Onset PD (YOPD, i.e., onset age before 40) patients. In the study examining environmental factors, 14 YOPD and 73 PD patients were recruited while 14 age-matched young subjects and 206 age-matched subjects were recruited as normal controls. Among the factors investigated, living close to farms or factories appeared to play a role in the development of YOPD (35.7% vs 7.1% and 50% vs 21.4% respectively), but this association was not obvious in typical PD (43.2% vs 46.1% and 32.4% vs 39.8% respectively). On the other hand, consuming more stewed and simmered food and head injuries appeared to be risk factors in both YOPD and PD while drinking tea and consuming vitamins appeared to have a protective effect. However, when all the factors were fitted into a logistic regression, negative association could only be found between doing exercise before illness in the typical PD group (OR=0.135). A positive association was also found between head injury and patients with typical PD (OR=3.433; 95% CI=1.2435-9.544), demonstrating a coincidence with most of the past results. When 5 single nucleotide polymorphisms in both regulatory region and exon 4 were investigated with association study, in which 7 YOPD and 74 PD patients were compared with 87 age-matched young controls and 141 age-matched controls, excessive heterozygous could be observed in the intron regulatory region I (IRE1) at nucleotide position +113 in typical PD group and that the genotype GC appeared to be positively related with PD (OR=2.048, 95% CI=1.091-3.843), but this observation was not discernible in YOPD. In addition, a positive association was found between APOE E4 allele and PD (OR=2.296; 95% CI=1.119-4.709); however it was impossible to deduce whether the corresponding effect was dose-dependent or not because E4 allele was quite rare in our population, especially for homozygous E4/E4. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b17726797.pdf | For All Users | 6.57 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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