Parkinson's disease and its comorbid disorders: an analysis of Michigan mortality data, 1970 to 1990

Using data from death certificates, we compared underlying causes of death for two populations of Michigan decedents: (1) persons 40 years of age and older for whom Parkinson's disease (PD) was listed as a contributing cause of death and who died in the years 1970 through 1989, and (2) all persons in Michigan over 40 years of age who died in 1970, 1980, or 1990. PD decedents were approximately 1.5 times more likely to die from cerebrovascular disease and three to four times more likely to die from pneumonia/influenza, but they had just 29% of the expected number of deaths due to cancer. These associations were maintained irrespective of gender or race. PD decedents had diabetes mellitus and heart diseases as frequently as decedents in the general population, but liver diseases were less frequent among PD decedents. These trends held throughout the 21-year study period. When we stratified cancers by whether they are known to be (1) highly related, (2) moderately related, or (3) weakly related or unrelated to smoking, there were still 2.5 times fewer cancers unrelated or weakly related to smoking among PD decedents than among decedents in the general population. We believe that the greater frequency of cerebrovascular disease in PD decedents may be due to a detection bias, since PD patients are more likely to be seen by neurologists, who are more apt to diagnose and document diseases of the nervous system. Pneumonia/influenza is more common among PD patients because of their relative immobility near the end of life.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)