NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Jun 05 - High total cholesterol is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's disease, according to findings published in the May 20th issue of Neurology.

"There is good evidence that high serum total cholesterol level increases coronary heart disease risk," Dr. Gang Hu, of the National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, Finland, and colleagues write. "However, the association between serum cholesterol level and neurodegenerative diseases risk has been debated."

The researchers therefore examined this relationship in a prospective cohort of 24,773 Finnish men and 26,153 women between the ages of 25 and 74 years without a history of Parkinson's disease and stroke at baseline. The team estimated hazard ratios (HRs) of incident Parkinson's disease for different levels of total cholesterol.

A total of 321 men and 304 women developed incident Parkinson's disease during a mean follow-up of 18.1 years. The average age at diagnosis was 64.5 and 65.8 years for men and women, respectively.

After adjustment for confounding factors, the HRs of Parkinson's disease at levels of total cholesterol ranging from less than 5 to more than 7 mmol/L were between 1.00 and 1.84 (p for trend = 0.035) in men.

In women, the respective HRs were 1.00 to 1.86 (p for trend = 0.113). The HRs in men and women combined were 1.00 to 1.86 (p for trend = 0.002).

"In the multivariate analyses, the increased risk of Parkinson's disease associated with increasing levels of total cholesterol was present both in subjects aged 25 to 44 years (p for trend = 0.025) and in subjects aged 45 to 54 years (p for trend = 0.011) at baseline, and in never smokers (p for trend = 0.061) and smokers (p for trend 0.044)."

"However, no association was found among subjects aged 55 years or older at baseline (p for trend = 0.98)," Dr. Hu's team explains.

They conclude that Parkinson's disease correlates with high baseline total cholesterol.

Neurology 2008;70:1972-1979.