Heart attack survivors less likely to have Parkinson's disease

People who have survived a heart attack are less likely to experience Parkinson's disease, new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association informs.

The study's authors analyzed health data from nearly 182,000 people who had a heart attack between 1995 and 2016. They then compared them to data from nearly one million healthy people in a control group.

After adjusting for other known factors that influence the risk of Parkinson's disease or heart attack, the results showed that participants who had had a heart attack were 20 percent less likely to develop Parkinson's disease later in life.

The analysis also showed that the risk of secondary Parkinsonism, which causes symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease, was reduced by 28% in these participants.

"For physicians treating patients after a heart attack, these results show that rehabilitation should be built around preventing ischemic stroke, vascular dementia and other cardiovascular diseases," said Jens Sundbøll, first author of the study and an epidemiologist at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.

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