Moderate physical exercise may help lower a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to Swedish research.
This discovery comes from a new study that followed 43,368 men and women in Sweden for about 13 years.
The researchers, led by Dr Karin Wirdefeldt of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, used questionnaires to determine levels of physical activity of many types including housework, commuting, occupational work, leisure time exercise, and total daily physical activity. Overall activity was converted into "metabolic equivalent" (MET) hours per day.
Participants were all healthy at the start of the study in 1997. By 2010, 286 individuals had developed Parkinson’s disease. Those who spent more than six hours per week on housework and commuting had a 43% lower risk than those who spent less than two hours per week on these activities.
A "medium amount" of overall activity, judged by MET hours per day, was found to carry the lowest risk of Parkinson’s disease. The risk was not lowered by leisure time exercise alone. Full details appear today (19 November) in Brain: A Journal of Neurology.
Dr Wirdefeldt believes the study has a number of strengths, in that it included both men and women, and all information on physical activity was assessed in advance of Parkinson’s disease developing.
"Another major strength of this study is that we considered the entire spectrum of daily energy output, rather than purely focusing on dedicated exercising," she adds.
"The protective effect of physical activity was further supported when we summarised all available evidence from published prospective cohort studies. These findings are important for both the general population and for the healthcare of patients with Parkinson’s disease."
Yang, F. et al. Physical activity and risk of Parkinson’s disease in the Swedish National March Cohort. Brain doi: 10.1093/brain/awu323
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