Contribution of Nutritional, Lifestyle, and Metabolic Risk Factors to Parkinson's Disease.

BACKGROUND: Modifiable risk factors for Parkinson's disease (PD) are poorly known. OBJECTIVES: The aim is to evaluate independent associations of different nutritional components, physical activity, and sedentary behavior and metabolic factors with the risk of PD. METHODS: In this population-based prospective cohort study using the data of the United Kingdom Biobank (from 2006-2010), 502,017 men and women who were free from PD (International Classification of Diseases 10th edition; "G20") at baseline were included. We implemented a Cox proportion hazard's model to evaluate the associations of different levels of physical activity, sitting time, sleep habits, diet quality, alcohol and coffee consumption, smoking, and body mass index with PD risk, adjusting for several confounding variables. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 12.8 years, lifestyle factors including vigorous physical activity (hazard ration [HR] = 0.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.75-0.94), low-to-moderate sitting time (HR = 0.89; 95% CI, 0.81-0.97), and high sleep quality (HR = 0.89; 95% CI, 0.80-0.99) were associated with a reduced risk of PD. Small amounts of coffee (HR = 0.88; 95% CI, 0.82-0.95), red meat (HR = 0.86; 95% CI, 0.76-0.97), and current smoking (HR = 0.65; 95% CI, 0.56-0.75) were also associated with a lower risk of PD, whereas alcohol intake (HR = 1.29; 95% CI, 1.06-1.56) with higher PD risk. Secondary analysis, including metabolic risk factors, confirmed these findings and highlighted the potential protective effect of plasma vitamin D and uric acid, but of low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, triglycerides, and C-reactive protein as well. CONCLUSIONS: Vigorous physical activity, reduced sitting time, good sleep quality together with small coffee intake and vitamin D supplementation are potentially neuroprotective lifestyle interventions for the prevention of PD. © 2024 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

Online Short-Term Mindfulness-Based Intervention During COVID-19 Quarantine in Italy: Effects on Wellbeing, Stress, and Anxiety.

To limit the first spread of COVID-19 in March 2020, the Italian government imposed strict lockdown measures to the population. Despite necessary to reduce the virus transmission and the burden to the hospitals, social isolation has caused detrimental effects on psychological wellbeing and mental health. Moreover, during this period, it was also difficult to deliver psychological treatments and psychiatric assistance. A short (a weekly session for 9 weeks) mindfulness-based meditation program, named Integral Meditation (IM), was administered entirely online to healthy adults from Italy. This is a two-groups pre-post-quasi-experimental study in which the two groups, treated and control, were not randomized. Through matching procedures aimed at overcoming the absence of randomization, we analyzed a sample of 84 subjects (42 for each group). By applying linear mixed effect models, we tested the hypothesis of a beneficial effect of IM on wellbeing, perceived stress, and state anxiety, as measured by three self-reported questionnaires (WEMWBS, PSS, and STAI-X1, respectively), assuming that this effect could be different according to the level of baseline trait anxiety, as measured by STAI-X2. The results showed a statistically significant effect of STAI-X1 (ß = -8.24 [95%CI -15.39; -1.09], p = 0.02) and WEMWBS (ß = 4.61 [95%CI 0.94; 8.29], p = 0.01) in the higher trait anxiety subgroup only. No statistically significant effect of IM was observed for PSS. These results suggest that our IM, delivered online, may increase mental wellbeing and decrease anxiety specifically in subjects with higher trait anxiety.