How Easy It Is For You To Quit Smoking = Early Sign of Parkinson’s Disease

People who are able to quit smoking easily on the first try are significantly more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease (PD) than their counterparts who struggle to quit, a new study suggest.

The finding, from a large population-based Danish case-control study, supports the notion that patients with PD are able to quit smoking more easily because they have fewer nicotinic receptors in their brain.

In fact, this relative dearth of nicotinic receptors in patients with PD is an early prodromal sign (an indication that a condition will be coming soon) of the disease, Beate Ritz, MD, PhD, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), states.

“We have moved away from seeing Parkinson’s as mostly a motor disease that starts when you get rigidity, slowness of movement, the falls and tremors, to thinking that it starts 10, 20, or 30 years prior to the motor symptoms,” Dr. Ritz said.

PD has a lot of nonmotor features, such as constipation, sexual dysfunction, heart and blood pressure issues, depression, cognitive impairment, sleep disorders, and loss of the sense of smell, she said.

“That said, the idea of this paper is that ease of stopping smoking is another premotor symptom of Parkinson’s, that’s what this paper shows,” she said.

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