People with Parkinson's disease may have a lower risk of dying, study finds

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People with Parkinson's disease may have a lower risk of dying, study finds

Washington US January 27 ANI A new study has found that people with Parkinson's disease who eat more flavonoids in richly coloured foods like berries, cocoa and red wine may have a lower mortality risk than those who don't.

The researchers found that when people who had already been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease PD ate more flavonoids, they had a lower chance of dying during the 34 year study period than those who did not consume as many flavonoids.

They found that eating more flavonoids before being diagnosed with PD was associated with a lower risk of death in men, but not in women.

Adding a few servings of flavonoid-rich foods to their diets a week could potentially be an easy way for people with PD to improve their life expectancy, said Xinyuan Zhang, PhD candidate in nutritional sciences at Penn State.

There was a correlation between higher consumption of berries and red wine, which are rich in flavonoid anthocyanins, with lower mortality, according to Zhang.

Zhang noted that wine consumption should not exceed the amount outlined in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is one drink per day for women and two for men.

More than 60,000 people are diagnosed with PD each year, and more than 10 million people in the world are living with the disease, according to the Parkinson's Foundation. The disease is caused by the brain not making enough dopamine and leads to tremors, stiffness and problems with balance.

Professor of Nutrition Sciences at Penn State, Xiang Gao, said that PD is not considered a fatal disease, but its complications can lead to increased risk of death, and that few studies have examined how the diet of people with PD can affect disease prognosis.

Our previous research showed that when people without Parkinson's ate more flavonoids, it was associated with a lower risk of developing the disease in the future, Gao said.

Gao said that we wanted to know whether flavonoid intake could be linked to better survival in individuals who had already been diagnosed with Parkinson's.

The researchers analyzed data from 599 women and 652 men who had recently been diagnosed with PD. The participants were asked how often they ate certain flavonoid-rich foods, such as tea, apples, berries, oranges and orange juice, and red wine. Flavonoid intake was then calculated by multiplying the flavonoid content of the foods by how often they were consumed.

After controlling for factors like age and several dietary factors like total calories consumed and overall diet quality, the researchers found that participants in the group of the highest 25 per cent of flavonoid consumers had a 70 per cent greater chance of survival than the lowest group.

The people in the highest group consumed about 673 milligrams of flavonoids each day, while those in the lowest group consumed about 134 mg.

The researchers also analyzed the effects of individual flavonoids. The researchers found that those in the top 25 per cent of consumers of anthocyanins found in red wine and berries had a 66 per cent greater survival rate than those in the lowest 25 per cent. The top 25 per cent of consumers of flavan 3 ols found in apples, tea and wine had a 69 per cent greater survival rate than the lowest 25 per cent.

Zhang said that while the study did not examine the mechanisms that may cause this association, they have proposed some theories.

Flavonoids are antioxidants, so it's possible that they could be lowering chronic neuroinflammation levels, Zhang said.

It's possible that they may interact with enzyme activities and slow neuron loss and could protect against cognitive decline and depression, which are both associated with higher mortality risk, Zhang added.

The researchers said that future studies could help find the exact mechanisms behind flavonoid consumption and mortality risk in people with PD.

Samantha Molsberry, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Tian-Shin Yeh, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Aedin Cassidy, Queen's University Belfast, Michael A. Schwarzschild, Massachusetts General Hospital and Alberto Ascherio, Harvard T.H. The Chan School of Public Health also participated in this work.