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Updated: Aug 13, 2026

The Use of Primary Human Fibroblasts for Monitoring Mitochondrial Phenotypes in the Field of Parkinson's Disease
Published on: October 3, 2012
Lifestyle-related risk factors for Parkinson's disease: a population-based study
M Baldereschi1, A Di Carlo, P Vanni
1Institute of Neurosciences, ILSA Study, Italian National Research Council, Florence, Italy. baldereschi@area.fi.cnr.it
Objectives:
To investigate the association of major lifestyle-related risk factors with the prevalent cases of Parkinson's disease (PD) identified by the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging.
Methods:
A total of 5632 individuals randomly selected from the population registers of eight centers were screened for parkinsonism using both a questionnaire and a neurologic examination. Screened positives underwent a structured clinical work-up for the diagnosis of parkinsonism and parkinsonism subtypes.
Results:
We identified 113 prevalent cases of PD. Age, male gender, and pesticide-use license were significantly related to PD. Heavy smoking was inversely related to PD. Age (OR = 1.1; 95% CI, 1.06-1.15) and pesticide-use license (OR = 3.7; 95% CI, 1.6-8.6) kept their significant correlation with the disease in the multivariate analysis to adjust for all the variables under investigation. Multivariate analyses were made for men and women separately: pesticide exposure was positively associated with PD only in men.
Conclusions:
Pesticide exposure might represent a candidate for environmental factors involved in PD.
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