News

Methamphetamines Linked With Parkinson's Disease

View on the News

Strong Support for Environmental Factor

Over the last 10 years, there have been a number of

studies that support the hypothesis that amphetamine use is a risk factor for

Parkinson’s disease. This is a very large retrospective study in a special

group of amphetamine-exposed patients that strongly supports that hypothesis.

This study compared the

rate of Parkinson’s disease in patients previously hospitalized with a

diagnosis of amphetamine or methamphetamine use with the rate of Parkinson’s

disease in patients previously hospitalized for appendicitis. They found a 76%

increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

The strength of this study

is the large number of patients who have a hospital diagnosis of amphetamine

use. A weakness is that we don’t have a sense of the duration and the dose of

amphetamine used by the patients – because they’re recreational users. The

authors assert that those in the meth/amphetamine group were

‘moderate-to-heavy’ users of amphetamines but detailed information is not

available.

Because of the limitations

of the study, we don’t know how many exposures and at what dose methamphetamine

is likely to increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

While this study provides

solid support for methamphetamine exposure as an environmental risk factor for

Parkinson’s disease, many scientists believe there are other environmental

factors to be discovered. We are

particularly interested in identifying agents that can be controlled, such as

avoiding methamphetamine exposure.

Dr. Chad Christine is

an associate professor of neurology at the University

of California, San Francisco. He reported that he has no

financial conflicts of interest.


 

FROM DRUG AND ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE

Methamphetamine use may increase an individual’s relative risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by as much as 76%, based on the results of a large retrospective database study.

"Our epidemiological data showing, in hospitalized methamphetamine users, increased risk of subsequent diagnosis of PD [Parkinson’s disease] in hospitalization or death records provides support to the long-hypothesized notion, based on animal data, that methamphetamine exposure might lead to enduring damage of brain dopamine neurons in humans," Dr. Russell C. Callaghan and his coinvestigators wrote in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Photo credit: ©Karen Mower/iStockphoto

Methamphetamine use may increase the relative risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 76%.

More than 30 years ago, researchers discovered that methamphetamine and its metabolite amphetamine can harm brain dopamine neurons in animal testing. The animal findings raise the concern that use of methamphetamine might damage dopamine neurons in humans and thereby increase the risk of developing PD.

To assess the risk of PD among patients who had used methamphetamine and amphetamine-like drugs, the investigators searched hospital inpatient admission data from 1990 until 2005 from the Patient Discharge Database of the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. These data contain records with demographic information and diagnoses for each inpatient discharged from a California-licensed hospital, including general acute care, acute psychiatric care, chemical dependency recovery, and psychiatric health facilities. The inpatient data were then linked to death records from the California Vital Statistics Database.

Dr. Callaghan of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, and his associates pulled together three cohorts for the study: 207,831 patients admitted for appendicitis, 35,335 patients admitted for a cocaine-related ICD-9 code, and 40,472 patients admitted for ICD-9 codes related to amphetamine or other psychostimulants (Drug Alcohol Depend. 2011 [doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2011.06.013]).

Patients in the appendicitis group had to be at least 30 years old with a diagnosis of an appendicitis-related condition. They could have no recorded indications or signs of PD or methamphetamine or cocaine use.

Likewise, patients in the cocaine group had to be at least 30 years old and had an ICD-9 code related to cocaine dependence, abuse, or poisoning. They could have no recorded indications or signs of PD, other alcohol or drug use, or HIV.

For the methamphetamine group, the researchers noted that it is not possible to distinguish between methamphetamine and other amphetamine-like stimulants based on ICD-9 codes. However, based on previous studies "we argue that it is reasonable to expect that the bulk of the admissions in our study are specific to methamphetamine."

The methamphetamine cohort had a significantly greater risk of a PD outcome – with a hazard ratio 1.76 – than did the appendicitis group. A PD outcome was measured as an inpatient admission with a diagnosis of PD or an underlying cause of death listed as PD. This result was based on a competing risks analysis using a 1:1 matched sample.

The increased risk "means that if we followed 10,000 methamphetamine users (at least 30 years of age) and 10,000 people of similar age, race, and sex from a California population-based sample for 10 years, we would expect approximately 21 cases of PD in the methamphetamine group and approximately 12 in the population group."

Similarly, the methamphetamine group had a greater risk of developing PD than did the cocaine group (hazard ratio, 2.41). But the cocaine group did not have a higher risk of developing PD than did the appendicitis group (HR, 1.04).

One important limitation of the study is its lack of information on the age of initiation, frequency, dose, or duration of drug use. "Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that the drug users in our study were, for the most part, ‘moderate to heavy’ stimulant users having clinically significant problems as indicated by a formal hospital diagnosis of a methamphetamine-use disorder," the investigators concluded.

"While our study does raise the question of whether licit amphetamines might also increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease, it is important to emphasize that our findings might not at all relate to those individuals who take much lower doses of amphetamine drugs for therapeutic purposes (e.g., for ADHD)."

All of the authors reported that they have no conflicts of interest.

Recommended Reading

Editorial: Betty Ford Transformed Public Perception of Addiction
MDedge Family Medicine
A better future for baby: Stemming the tide of fetal alcohol syndrome
MDedge Family Medicine
Excessive opioids blamed for respiratory arrest…A rising PSA, but no evaluation…A hemorrhoid…or something else?
MDedge Family Medicine
Does office spirometry improve quit rates in smokers?
MDedge Family Medicine
Is it time to drug test your chronic pain patient?
MDedge Family Medicine
Urine drug testing: An unproven risk management tool?
MDedge Family Medicine
Opioids for osteoarthritis? Weighing benefits and risks: A Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group review
MDedge Family Medicine
What are the adverse effects of prolonged opioid use in patients with chronic pain?
MDedge Family Medicine
Which smoking cessation interventions work best?
MDedge Family Medicine
Drug testing is inexpensive? Not always, says this doc
MDedge Family Medicine