Maternal age is not a risk factor for Parkinson's disease

Translational Informatics for Parkinson's Disease: from Big Biomedical Data to Small Actionable Alterations

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurological disease in elderly people, and its morbidity and mortality are increasing with the advent of global ageing. The traditional paradigm of moving from small data to big data in biomedical research is shifting toward big data-based identification of small actionable alterations. To highlight the use of big data for precision PD medicine, we review PD big data and informatics for the translation of basic PD research to clinical applications. We emphasize some key findings in clinically actionable changes, such as susceptibility genetic variations for PD risk population screening, biomarkers for the diagnosis and stratification of PD patients, risk factors for PD, and lifestyles for the prevention of PD. The challenges associated with the collection, storage, and modelling of diverse big data for PD precision medicine and healthcare are also summarized. Future perspectives on systems modelling and intelligent medicine for PD monitoring, diagnosis, treatment, and healthcare are discussed in the end.

Prenatal and early life factors and risk of Parkinson's disease

Few studies have investigated the relation between early life factors and risk of Parkinson's disease (PD), although a potential role of exposures during pregnancy and childhood has been hypothesized. The study population comprised participants in two prospective cohorts: the Nurses' Health Study (121,701 female nurses followed up from 1976-2002) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (51,529 male health professionals followed up from 1986-2002). PD risk was examined in relation to season of birth, birthweight, parental age at birth, preterm birth, multiple birth, ever having been breast-fed, and handedness. We identified 659 incident PD cases. No significant relation with PD was observed for birthweight, paternal age, preterm birth, multiple birth, and having been breast-fed. A modest nonsignificant association was suggested for season of birth (30% higher risk of PD associated with spring versus winter birth) and for older maternal age at birth (75% increased risk among those with mothers aged 30 years and older versus younger than 20 years). Left-handedness was associated with a 62% increased risk of PD in women but not in men. Further investigation of the relation between prenatal, perinatal, or neonatal factors and PD in other study populations is suggested.