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Frequent Distressing Dreams May be Prodromal Symptom of Parkinson Disease
Frequent distressing dreams were associated with an increased risk for incident Parkinson disease during more than a decade of follow-up in a prospective US cohort of community-dwelling older men. The findings were reported online in eClinicalMedicine.
“In this study, frequent distressing dreams were associated with a greater than 3-fold risk for Parkinson’s disease during the first 5 years after baseline, though this association had substantially attenuated during the subsequent 7 years,” wrote study author Abidemi Idowu Otaiku, of the University of Birmingham Centre for Human Brain Health, Birmingham, United Kingdom. “This suggests that late-onset distressing dreams, rather than life-long distressing dreams, may be linked with increased Parkinson’s disease risk.”
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The analysis included 3818 men, age 67 years and older, from the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study cohort in the United States. At baseline, participants completed an item on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index that asked about the frequency of distressing dreams in the past month. The study looked at responses to the item and incident Parkinson’s disease diagnosed over 12 years of follow-up.
Some 91 of the men, or 2.4% of the cohort, developed Parkinson’s disease over follow-up, according to the study. Men who reported experiencing distressing dreams 1 or more times a week had a 2-fold risk of incident Parkinson’s disease overall. But when stratified by follow-up time, frequent distressing dreams were associated with a 3.4-fold risk for Parkinson’s disease diagnosis within 5 years of baseline. No association was identified during the subsequent 7 years.
“This suggests that frequent distressing dreams may be a prodromal symptom of Parkinson’s disease,” the study advised. “As such, screening for late-onset distressing dreams in the general population may help to identify individuals at increased risk of developing a rapidly progressing subtype of Parkinson’s disease, in whom early interventions could be targeted.”
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