Parkinson's Disease in the Gulf Countries: An Updated Review

The Arabian Gulf region is a rapidly developing part of the world. With the increase in average life-expectancy, idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD), is also expected to increase in prevalence. Furthermore, the high rate of consanguinity among Arabs probably makes familial cases of PD more likely to be encountered than other areas in the world. This review provides an update on the published literature on sporadic and familial PD in Gulf Arabs.

Although the Arab population of this region shares religious beliefs and demographic characteristics with other Arabs, their environmental exposures and genetic makeup may be different. This could account for the relatively low prevalence of PD reported in the Al-Thugba study (27 per 100,000) compared with prevalence rates by most other studies on Arab (mainly North African) populations (31.4-557.4 per 100,000).

Gulf countries are considered rich countries, which makes conducting nation-wide or even international studies logistically easier than it is in many other countries. Such multinational research can be organized by the existing Gulf Cooperation Council, or through a collaboration of the Ministries of Health. This would, hopefully, culminate in the introduction of more research centers, as well as the implementation of better health care policies and practices for the ageing community.