Friday 8 July 2016

Meta-analysis of the association between serum iron levels and Parkinson's disease: Evidence from 11 publications

This is an interesting result... the only Mendelian Randomisation study in this area (by Pichler and colleagues) suggested an effect in the opposite direction i.e that elevated iron is protective against PD... with observational studies and PD it is always difficult to understand the nature of the association - cause or effect??

Brain Res. 2016 Jun 29. pii: S0006-8993(16)30467-X. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2016.06.044. [Epub ahead of print]
Jiao J, Guo H, He Y, Wang J, Yuan J, Hu W.


BACKGROUND:
There is no consensus on the serum iron levels and Parkinson's disease (PD). The aim of this study is to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to analyze the relationship between serum iron levels and PD risk.

METHODS:
We searched the databases of PubMed, Web of knowledge, Embase, the Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and China Biology Medical literature to assess the association between serum iron levels and PD risk. Standardized mean differences (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) with random-effect model were used to combine the results.

RESULTS:
Eleven related articles met our selection criteria and contained a total of 829 PD patients and 1219 healthy controls. Our meta-analysis results revealed that the serum iron levels in PD patients were significantly higher than those in healthy controls (SMD = 0.27, 95% CI = 0.18, 0.37, P<0.001). Subgroup analysis by ethnicity showed that the serum iron levels in PD patients were significantly higher than controls both in Asian populations and European populations. Significant associations were also found in prospective studies and case-control studies.

CONCLUSIONS:
Our meta-analysis showed strong evidence that a significantly higher serum iron levels are present in PD patients when compared to the healthy controls.


Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Mild Parkinsonian Signs in a Community Population

One question that many of the PREDICT-PD participants ask me is “I am slower than I used to be, does it mean that I am getting Parkinson’...