Association of physical activity pattern and risk of Parkinson’s disease

 Here is a link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-024-01135-3

 Here is the abstract.

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Increasing evidence suggests an association between exercise duration and Parkinson’s disease. However, no high-quality prospective evidence exists confirming whether differences exist between the two modes of exercise, weekend warrior and equal distribution of exercise duration, and Parkinson’s risk. Hence, this study aimed to explore the association between different exercise patterns and Parkinson’s risk using exercise data from the UK Biobank. The study analyzed data from 89,400 UK Biobank participants without Parkinson’s disease. Exercise data were collected using the Axivity AX3 wrist-worn triaxial accelerometer. Participants were categorized into three groups: inactive, regularly active, and engaged in the weekend warrior (WW) pattern. The relationship between these exercise patterns and Parkinson’s risk was assessed using a multifactorial Cox model. During a mean follow-up of 12.32 years, 329 individuals developed Parkinson’s disease. In a multifactorial Cox model, using the World Health Organization–recommended threshold of 150 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week, both the active WW group [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.58; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.43–0.78; P < 0.001] and the active regular group (HR = 0.44; 95% CI = 0.34–0.57; P < 0.001) exhibited a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease compared with the inactive group. Further, no statistically significant difference was observed between the active WW and the active regular groups (HR = 0.77; 95% CI = 0.56–1.05; P = 0.099). In conclusion, in this cohort study, both the WW exercise pattern and an equal distribution of exercise hours were equally effective in reducing Parkinson’s risk.

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Sounds great, doesn’t it?

 The most trustworthy statistical studies to evaluate treatment efficacy are prospective, double-blind, and randomized. Participants are assigned to the treatment and placebo groups randomly and then tracked over time. This study is prospective. However, the treatment (exercise) group is not chosen randomly. Existing active and inactive groups were used. This is a fundamental flaw because there can be an association between a tendency to exercise and a predisposition to develop Parkinson’s disease.

 The study does not justify the conclusion that an inactive person can reduce his/her Parkinson’s risk by becoming active.