Relatives of Parkinson's Patients at Higher PsychiatricRisk

Relatives of Parkinson's Patients at Higher PsychiatricRisk
THURSDAY, Dec. 6 (HealthDay News) -- The close relatives of people withParkinson's disease are at increased risk for depression and anxietydisorders, new research suggests.
The risk is particularly high in the brothers, sisters, parents andchildren of people who develop Parkinson's before age 75, said a team fromthe Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
The study included 1,000 immediate relatives of 162 Parkinson'spatients and 850 immediate relatives of 147 people without Parkinson's.It's the first large population-based study to identify this kind ofassociation.
"Studies by our group and others have shown that relatives of patientswith Parkinson's disease have an increased risk of Parkinson's disease.Recently, we showed they also have increased risk of essential tumor andof cognitive impairment or dementia. However, the risk of psychiatricdisorders was unknown," senior author Dr. Walter Rocca, a neurologist andepidemiologist, said in a prepared statement.
"Because many patients with Parkinson's disease develop anxiety anddepression after and even before the onset of the disease, we exploredwhether this tendency was present to a greater extent in family members ofpeople with Parkinson's disease compared with people without the disease.We found that, indeed, relatives of patients with Parkinson's disease areat increased risk for anxiety and depressive disorders, which suggests agenetic or other relationship between those disorders and Parkinson'sdisease," Rocca said.
Further research is needed to determine the exact cause or causes thatboost the risk, he said.
The study was published in the December issue of the journalArchives of General Psychiatry.