Two Pesticides Linked to Higher Rates of Parkinson’s Disease

(EPA.gov)

A new study by government and private research institutes shows higher rates of Parkinson’s disease among people using the highly restricted pesticides rotenone and paraquat. The findings were published recently in an online issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The research team found that people who used either pesticide developed Parkinson’s disease about 2.5 times more often than non-users. The study was a collaborative effort by researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, part of National Institutes of Health, and the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, California.

NIEHS’s Freya Kamel, a co-author of the paper, notes, “Rotenone directly inhibits the function of the mitochondria, the structure responsible for making energy in the cell.” Speaking about Paraquat, Kamel adds that the pesticide “increases production of certain oxygen derivatives that may harm cellular structures.”

The researchers studied 110 people with Parkinson’s disease compared to 358 matched subjects — by age, gender, and state — from the Farming and Movement Evaluation (FAME) Study that investigates the relationship between Parkinson’s disease and exposure to pesticides or other agents that are toxic to nervous tissue. The investigators diagnosed Parkinson’s disease by agreement of movement disorder specialists and assessed the lifelong use of pesticides using detailed interviews. FAME is a case-control study and part of the larger Agricultural Health Study of farming and health in approximately 90,000 licensed pesticide applicators and their spouses.

NIEHS says there are no currently registered home-garden or residential uses for either paraquat or rotenone. Paraquat use has long been restricted to certified applicators, because of research on animals that raised concerns about Parkinson’s disease. Rotenone’s use as a pesticide is allowed only to kill invasive fish species.

Read more: Company Leads Consortium to Crystallize Parkinson’s Enzyme

*     *     *