Living Near a Golf Course Could Lead to a Terrible Chronic Illness

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Living Near a Golf Course Could Lead to a Terrible Chronic Illness

A controversial new study has found that those who live within just two miles of a golf course may face up to three times the odds of developing Parkinson’s disease, the progressive neurological disorder that causes tremors and difficulty with balance.

According to the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

published in the journal JAMA Network Open, environmental risks (including pesticide exposure and groundwater contamination) could be contributing to the risk of developing Parkinson’s near a golf course. And in the United States, golf courses are treated with extremely high levels of pesticides, which could in fact be varying degrees of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

The team examined medical records of over 5,000 people in southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin from 1991 to 2015, as well as groundwater vulnerability data. The team found that people living between one and two miles from a golf course weren’t just more likely, but were 198 percent more likely to develop Parkinson’s compared to a control group.

“The odds of *** were relatively constant within close proximity to a golf course and decreased linearly as distance increased; individuals living farther from a golf course had reduced odds of ***, decreasing relative to the distance from the nearest golf course,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

But not everybody agrees with that assessment. Experts have called the conclusion “reductive,” arguing that the evidence is simply not strong enough to draw a definitive line between the prevalence of Parkinson’s and the pesticides used at golf courses in the US.

“This study suggests an association between pesticides and Parkinson’s, however there are some important limitations in the methodology to be aware of,” said Parkinson’s *** director of research David Dexter in a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. “Firstly, Parkinson’s starts in the brain ten-15 years before diagnosis and the study didn’t only use subjects who permanently lived in the area. This would not only affect participants’ exposure, but also suggests their Parkinson’s could have started before they moved around a golf course.”

“The population was also not matched for location with 80 percent of the Parkinson’s subjects living in urban areas, compared to only 30 percent of controls, hence other factors like air pollution from motor vehicles etc. could also account for some of the increases in Parkinson’s incidence,” he added.

“Many studies have investigated whether pesticides increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s in different populations around the world,” Parkinson’s *** research lead Katherine Fletcher added. “The results have been varied, but overall suggest that exposure to pesticides may increase the risk of the condition.”

“However, the evidence is not strong enough to show that pesticide exposure directly causes Parkinson’s,” she added, arguing the study is “reductive” and “doesn’t take into account how someone might have been exposed to pesticides at their workplace or whether they have a genetic link to the condition.”

Despite decades of research, there’s no cure for Parkinson’s disease. However, treatments to slow its progression are available.

Nailing down the exact cause of the disease has also proven extremely difficult. The consensus is that there are likely a number of genetic and environmental factors at play.

“It’s probably a perfect storm,” Parkinson’s Canada CEO Karen Lee

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. “Meaning, you have genes that prime you to potentially get Parkinson’s, and if you’re put in the right environment, potentially that is what sets off the onset of Parkinson’s disease.”

More on Parkinson’s: Brett Favre Says He Has Parkinson’s, Likely From Countless Concussions

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Living #Golf #Lead #Terrible #Chronic #Illness

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up