Antiepileptic drugs linked to incident Parkinson’s disease

An association between common antiepileptic drugs and incident Parkinson’s disease was found, researchers reported in JAMA Neurology.

Recent observational studies have established a temporal association between epilepsy and PD; however, the mechanism underlying the association is unclear, Daniel Belete, MBChB, of the preventive neurology unit at Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues wrote.

Belete and colleagues conducted a nested case-control study to investigate the association between antiepileptic drugs and incident PD.

The researchers obtained data from the UK Biobank in 2006. Individuals with linked primary care prescription data were included. Controls were matched at a 6:1 ratio for age, sex, race and ethnicity, as well as socioeconomic status.

A total of 222,106 participants with primary care prescription data were eligible for study enrollment. Only individuals with self-reported Parkinson’s diagnoses or missing data for matching variables were excluded.

In total, 1,433 individuals with a diagnosis of PD and 8,598 controls were included in the analysis. Of the 1,433 individuals, 61% were men, and 97.5% reported being white. The cohort had a median age of 71 years (range, 65-75 years).

An association was found between antiepileptic drug prescriptions and incident PD (OR = 1.8; 95% CI, 1.35-2.4). In addition, there was a trend for a greater number of prescription issues and multiple antiepileptic drugs being associated with a greater risk for Parkinson’s.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first observational study to investigate a range of [antiepileptic drugs] and their association with incident PD,” Belete and colleagues wrote. “As such, it sets the scene and highlights the need for further work to corroborate our findings in other large data sets because these findings could have important implications for clinical decision-making.”