According to this soon-to-be-published scientific study, weight loss in the early stages of Parkinson’s may signify a more rapid and aggressive form of the disease. It’s not clear if one condition causes the other; there’s just an association.
Key quote, bolding mine:
Data required for the current study – including annual height and weight measurement and results from the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) covering the three to five years of trial enrollment – was available for 1,673 study participants. For 77 percent of the participants (1,282), BMI remained stable during the study period; 158 participants (9 percent) experienced weight loss, and 233 (14 percent) actually gained weight. Those who lost weight during the study period showed a greater average increase in UPDRS score – indicating a worsening of symptoms – both in terms of motor symptoms and overall than did those whose weight remained stable. Participants who gained weight had the smallest annual increase in UPDRS scores.
So add a scoop of ice cream to that second slice of pie, and let’s digest these additional quotes:
“I suspect we may be looking at several subtypes of this disease,” says Anne-Marie Wills, MD, of the MGH Department of Neurology and Neurological Clinical Research Institute, lead and corresponding author of the JAMA Neurology paper. “The patients who experience early weight loss appear to have a more severe, systemic form of the disease, possibly due to involvement of the neuroendocrine system or the gastrointestinal nervous system, while those who gained weight may have a milder form of the disease.”
That’s something I’ve heard a lot recently – that there may be subtypes of Parkinson’s, which explains why people have such different experiences with it.
Also:
While previous studies have found that a higher body mass index (BMI) – a measure of weight relative to height – is associated with improved survival in Huntington disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), no published study [until now] has examined the relationship of weight to disease progression and survival in Parkinson disease.
Um…well…top the pie a la mode with whipped cream, for good measure!
