Abstract.
In this essay we are reviewing two articles, which are devoted to the same theme – revealing association between incidence of Parkinson's disease (PD) and alcohol consumption. The final aim of both investigations was to better understand the nature of low risk of PD incidence in cigarette smokers and coffee drinkers, which was revealed in other experiments.
Both articles, which we are going to review, are devoted to topical issues of influence of regular alcohol consumption on the risk of developing of Parkinson's disease. This issue is debatable due to the presence of conflicting data resulting from different researches. The first article - “A prospective study of alcoholism and the risk of Parkinson’s disease” was written by Miguel A. Hernán and Giancarlo Logroscino from Department of Epidemiology of Harvard School of Public Health and by Luis A. García Rodríguez from Spanish pharmacoepidemiological Research Center . Article was published in J Neurol (2004) 251 [Suppl 7] : VII/14–VII/17. In this article, authors conducted an indirect test of hypothesis that alcohol effects on the risk of Parkinson's disease development.
The second article – “Alcohol Consumption and the Incidence of Parkinson’s Disease” was written by Miguel A. Herna´n, MD, DrPH, from the Departments of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, by Honglei Chen, MD, PhD, from the Departments Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, by Michael A. Schwarzschild, MD, PhD, from the department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and by Alberto Ascherio, MD, DrPH - Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA. In this article, authors investigated the association between consumption of alcoholic beverages and risk of PD in two large prospective cohorts - Nurses’ Health Study, and Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study. They detected 415 new cases of PD during follow-up. The article was published in journal Annals of Neurology Vol 54 No 2.
The similarity of these articles, in our opinion, is apparent with the overall theme of the study. So we should first of all pay attention to the differences in these articles. First, we note that the studies in articles were conducted in the various groups of patients.
In the first article authors investigated the association between alcoholism and incidence of PD in a case-control study nested within a prospectively followed population: the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) which includes over 3 million Britons who are enrolled with selected general practitioners.
In the second article authors investigated whether drinkers of alcoholic beverages had a lower risk of PD than abstainers in two large prospective cohorts: the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study.
It is worth noting that in the first article criteria for exclusion of patients in the study were carefully selected to exclude patients, who had the history of PD or of use of drugs for the treatment of PD, and history of use of drugs that may cause drug-induced Parkinsonism. Follow-up also ended in this study at the first computerized symptom (tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, abnormal …