Mov Disord: In Parkinson's patients, how does the mortality rate change over time?

Although the treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD) continues to make progress, the mortality rate is still rising compared with the general population
.
However, previous population-based studies tended to use epidemic cohorts with different disease durations rather than event cohorts with more information for follow-up after diagnosis , leading to possible overestimation of mortality

Other population-based mortality studies include patients with higher mortality rates of progressive supranuclear palsy, cortical basal degeneration, and multiple system atrophy, or were recruited from dyskinesia clinics, which may cause selection bias
.

Over the past decade, the age-adjusted mortality rate for people over 50 in the UK has been declining, but there is no data to show whether the same is true for PD patients
.

Great changes have taken place in the availability and use of symptomatic treatments for PD, including drugs, surgery, and non-drug treatments, but there is currently no treatment that can be used to change the condition
.

Recent treatment changes are intended to improve the quality of life of patients, but it is not clear whether they also affect life expectancy
.

Therefore, Olaitan Okunoye of UCL and others have studied whether the mortality rate of PD patients during the period 2006-2016 has similar changes compared with the general population

They included individuals over the age of 50 who recorded their PD diagnosis and at least two prescriptions for any anti-Parkinson's disease for the first time from 2006 to 2016, as well as up to 6 frequency-matched controls from the Health Improvement Network (THIN) database
.
And use the multivariate Poisson regression method to estimate the adjusted mortality rate

Result
.
A total of 10104 people diagnosed with PD and 55,664 people without PD were included

In general, compared with the non-PD control group, the mortality of PD increased slightly (adjusted mortality ratio: 1.
14; 95% CI: 1.
03 to 1.
19)
.

Within 5 years after diagnosis, the adjusted mortality rate per 1,000 person-years for PD patients approximately doubled from 43 (95% CI: 38 to 48) to 75 (95% CI: 64 to 85)
.
After adjusting for age, sex, and time after diagnosis, compared with people without PD (5% per year; 95% CI: 3%-6%), the mortality rate of PD patients decreased more from 2007 to 2016.